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I WON’T SAY THIS AGAIN.

What to do if someone you love is addicted to drugs or alcohol

1. Recognize you are completely powerless over their addiction. You didn’t cause it and nothing you say or do will control or cure them. You are your first priority. Never make sacrifices for them.

2. Offer a completely non-judgemental ear to them. Tell them that they can talk to you about anything without judgement and you will stay neutral and keep everything confidential unless the person is seriously in danger. Do not give advice unless they ask for any.

3. Offer to assist the person in finding treatment. If he or she refuses, you have the completely valid first option of cutting off all contact with the person until they decide to accept help.

4. If they don’t want to get better yet and you are comfortable still including someone in active addiction in your life, do your best to treat them no differently than you did before. Don’t be surprised if you have to distance yourself or put things on hold. Set boundaries as needed, such as saying “no drugs in my house” and making it clear you do not support it or want to be associated with it. If they break the boundaries, reevaluate the relationship.

5. Engage in harm reduction tactics WITHOUT enabling them. Harm reduction would be carrying narcan, calling 911 if needed, encouraging them to use sterile equipment, offering to help them wash their dishes or go on a walk with them, and providing them with basic needs such as water/blanket/leftover food. Enabling would be letting them borrow money, driving them everywhere, cleaning their house, coming with them on drug runs, taking them out to eat every day, and letting them live at your house without paying rent.

6. Recognize that drug addicts are SNEAKY AF goddamn liars and thieves! (This is coming from a drug addict.) Don’t be shook if you get scammed. Don’t trust anything they say and keep your wallet, expensive jewelry, alcohol, and prescriptions on you or locked up. NEVER lend a drug addict money. 9 times out of 10 it is not “for food”. If you are convinced they are actually starving, invite them over and give them some canned soup or something and a pot and let them make it.

7. If it’s too hard to watch your loved one deteriorate even with set boundaries and harm reduction techniques, that’s when you need to go with the first option and cut them off until they receive treatment. Accept, surrender, and let go. It’s not about them, It’s about YOU, and you come first. Do not use threats or scare tactics, and be respectful. Assure them you will never stop loving them.

8. Attend a support group like al-anon to cope with any grief or anxiety you might have regarding your loved one’s addiction and do all you can to educate yourself on the disease. Remember that it is a DISEASE.

9. Once your loved one is getting treatment, reach out to them and let them know you are happy they are getting help and you’re there for them. Be involved with their treatment by calling them, visiting them, or asking about their therapy groups and meetings. Say that you are willing to support them in any way they need and ask how you can do so.

10. Don’t sugarcoat things or act like everything is fine. Tell them how you really feel. Be honest with them in a non-accusatory way with “I” statements. Tell him or her how their addiction affected you, how you cried about it, and how you feel betrayed and now have a level of mistrust for them.

11. You’ll pretty much have the same boundaries you set with them in active addiction as you will in their early recovery. You have to continue to refuse to enable them, continue to keep your money safe, keep the narcan on hand, and make it clear what will happen if they decide to return to addiction. Tell them that it’s going to take awhile to build your trust back. Realize that even if they’re clean, the behaviors and compulsions may still be present. Keep working your al-anon program and taking the steps you need to keep yourself mentally healthy and independent from the addict. Remember that once an addict, always an addict.

12. Throughout the whole process, never treat the addict as less than human. Understand that they have a disease that is not their fault. Never judge, insult, pity, attack, or blame them. Understand that they are struggling with massive amounts of shame, guilt, and low-self esteem. They aren’t having a good time, they are miserable. Addiction sucks ass. If it’s hard for you, it’s harder for them. Remember that!!

burnt-out-angel

What addicts want normal people and those who love us to know

1. We are not stupid, we’re well aware of the damage. We know that what we are doing is killing us. We know that we are hurting people. We are aware of how society sees us. We know.

2. ADDICTION IS NOT ENJOYABLE. We are not “partying” or having a good time. The party ended a long time ago. We’re fucking miserable. Many of these drugs were never party drugs to begin with. It might seem fun and exciting the first week or month, but it quickly becomes a chore.

3. We don’t keep using just because we want to get high all the time. We use to not get sick and just to function normally in our daily lives. After awhile, we’re not thinking “how am I going to get high today?” We’re thinking “how will I be able to get to work today?” And then the reason we relapse is because we can’t remember surviving without it.

4. We have massive amounts of guilt, shame, and low self-esteem. We don’t need to be called “pieces of shit” and “scum junkies” because we already feel that way about ourselves every day!! The disease tells us not to care when we lie to and steal from friends and family. The disease makes us selfish. But we are human and we feel terrible about it. We aren’t psychopaths and are more than capable of feeling remorse. The more selfish acts we engage in, the worse we feel about ourselves. But we compulsively keep dragging ourselves through dirt.

5. It has absolutely nothing to do with you or anyone else. You didn’t cause it, you can’t control it, and you can’t cure it. It is no one’s fault and you did not fail as a sister/brother/mother/father/aunt/grandpa/best friend. When we lie to or steal from you or choose drugs over you, it is nothing personal. It does not mean we don’t still love you. When the disease takes over, it doesn’t necessarily want to hurt you. It just assigns everyone the same value so they are neutral/irrelevant. Someone in active addiction is stuck in a completely internal thought process that completely blocks out the existence of other people.

6. The drug is stronger than love and values like family and friendship and that’s why we’ve chosen it over you. That is the unfortunate truth. That’s why we find a higher power in recovery, because no human power or emotion can fight off the drug on its own.

7. While addiction makes us choose the drug, we NEVER chose the addiction over you. Addiction is miserable and we don’t want it. The addiction chose us.

lizardbby

listen i love women, i LOVE them. but if u r a feminist & believe that women are capable of anything, u also have to recognize that women are capable of being evil and sadistic and malicious. because the point of feminism is that women are human beings. they are not ethereal beings who can Do No Wrong. women make mistakes and they commit crimes and they hurt people. blindly praising all women for being perfect is actively harmful to people who have been hurt and abused by women and also to women as a group because we are NOT perfect! we are human and that is the whole damn point my dude.

valtsv

slavic forests are actually located in another dimension

valtsv

if you’ve ever been in one of the great forests in a slavic country you’ll know that there’s a point where the trees grow so densely packed that the air is completely still and it’s so silent you could hear a pin drop a mile away and you suddenly become uncomfortably aware of the sound of your own heartbeat and the knowledge that the trees surrounding you are alive and just as aware of your presence as you are of theirs, and that’s when you know you’ve crossed into a different realm

niggazinmoscow

I hope I am not the only one who just found out this shit lmao

wow, that’s wild. Medusa was a symbol of strength, feminism, power, and divine femininity. She wasn’t a villain at all, just a victim of jealousy.

itsjahfree-geoffrey

Protect your divine femininity…ladies and gentlemen.

kristina100000

i cant breathe

for-the-love-of-flowers91-deact

Wildflowers in my front yard.

flowerinaflame

Ain’t nothing wrong with eating some bread dipped in olive oil, balsamic vinegar and various herbs

onlinecounsellingcollege

“I think it’s very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.”

— Oscar Wilde

my-meowing-romance

ramirezbundydahmer

When the Nazi concentration camps were liberated by the Allies, it was a time of great jubilation for the tens of thousands of people incarcerated in them. But an often forgotten fact of this time is that prisoners who happened to be wearing the pink triangle (the Nazis’ way of marking and identifying homosexuals) were forced to serve out the rest of their sentence. This was due to a part of German law simply known as “Paragraph 175” which criminalized homosexuality. The law wasn’t repealed until 1969.

crypto-keynesian

This should be required learning, internationally.

stripedsilverfeline

You need to know this. You need to remember this. This is not something to swept under the carpet nor be forgotten.

Never. Too many have died for the way they have loved. That needs stop now.

Make it stop?

hollowoutmybody

I did a report on this in my World History class my sophomore year of high school. It was incredibly unsettling.

pearlclam

My teacher shown the class this. Mostly everyone in the class felt uncomfortable.

sashadechagny

I have reblogged this in the past, but it is so ironic that it comes across my dash right now. I a currently working as a docent at my city’s Holocaust Education Center (( I say currently because I’ve also done research and translation for them )) and out current exhibit is one on loan from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ((USHMM)). This is a little known historical fact that Paragraph 175 was not repealed after the war and those convicted under Nazi laws as a danger to society because they were gay were not released because they had be convicted in a court of law. There was no liberation or justice for them as they weren’t considered criminals, or even victims for that matter. They were criminals who remained persecuted and ostracized and kept on the fringes of society for decades after the war had been won. Paragraph175 wasn’t actually repealed until 1994. And it was only in May 2002, that the German parliament completed legislation to pardon all homosexuals convicted under Paragraph175 during the Nazi era. History has forgotten about these men and women — please educate yourselves so this does not happen again. Remember this history. Remember them.

jehovahhthickness

@mindlesshumor ok how the fuck did I miss this when I’ve studied The Holocaust like nobody’s business??? wtf

thereadersmuse

Because the history we have left regarding it is literally the contents of this first hand account.

It is a thin little book.

When I first opened it, I wondered why it was so thin.

Why there wasn’t other books like it.

Other first hand accounts.

By the time I finished it, I didn’t wonder anymore.

jeaniefranklins

Further reading:

I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror by Pierre Seel

An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin by Gad Beck

The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals by Richard Plant

Branded By The Pink Triangle by Ken Setterington

Bent by Martin Sherman (fiction; however, it’s often credited with bringing attention to gay Holocaust victims for the first time since the war ended)

gemfyre

This is one of the memorial sculptures in Dachau. It was erected in the early 60s and is missing the pink triangles. Because in the early 60s, homosexuality was still a crime in most of the world. Our tour guide explained why the pink triangles have not been added later - if they were, then folks would assume that they had always been there. This way people ask “why aren’t there pink triangles?” and somebody can explain why - because in some ways, the rest of the world was as bass-ackwards as Nazi Germany.

freefalasteen

Apparently, this wasnt taught in schools in the 70s-80s, cuz when I mentioned it to my mom, she had no idea that gays were held in concentration camps. She thought it was just jewish people.

claryfairhild

i’m so done with the way girls in twenties are treated. i’m so done with people who literally create timetable for us. 20- 24 find a guy, 24-26 make him propose to you, 27-29 get married. i’m so done. i’m do not want to get 2 a.m texts from my best friend who is freaking out that she is gonna die alone. i do not want see my 20 years old friend wasting her time on some guys who are not even interested in her. i do not want see us falling for every nice guy who does not look creepy. i do not want to see girls get sad or paranoid just bcos they do not fill in the schedule. you are ok. you should enjoy your life at its fullest and one day you will find 10/10 so do not pursue 6 just because you do not want to be single. it is ok and one day you will find someone. do not split your love with people who does not deserve it. keep it for yourself and when time will come you will know. i know it hurts. i know you wish u could just open part of yourself and release the buzzing love. but not every kind of love is romantic. show it to your family, friends, plants, yourself.

kaerya

Not a real criticism, just an expansion really, but … it’s not just the timetables we need to get away from, but the goal itself, I think. “One day you will find someone,” sounds comforting, but the reason it doesn’t lay fears to rest is because we are all smart enough to know it’s not necessarily true.

My aunt is over sixty, never married, and never, so far as I am aware, ever even had a great romance. She dated a lot, but never clicked and now seems to have given up. My mentor is over seventy, divorced her asshole husband more than half her life ago and has never found anyone since.

We all know women (and men) like these. And because we know them, we know that “one day you will find someone,” is just … hogwash. Because sometimes you just … don’t. Or sometimes you do, but he turns out to be a cad. Or you do and the universe rips you apart in the most unfair way possible. And because society has us so fixated on finding “our other half” or whatever, we view these women as cautionary tales.

But …

My aunt trains dogs. Her schipperke is the national champion for his breed. She spent so much of her life as a librarian, nurturing the love of books in kids, myself among them. I ride horses because of her, and it’s one of the very few things I do that makes my soul feel at peace.

My mentor is one of the best criminal defense attorneys in her state. She has devoted her life to fighting to ensure that everyone gets a vigorous defense. Because of her countless people have had the opportunity to turn their lives around. Because of her, they’ve had a life to turn around. Because of her, the prosecution and the police in her jurisdiction are forced to behave ethically and adhere to the rule of law. She’s still, even now fighting to abolish the death penalty. It’s because of her that I am pursuing the life I am.

These women’s lives are not nothing. In fact they are a whole lot of something, and it makes my heart hurt that I ever, in my dark 3 am’s, thought of their lives as something to be avoided at all costs.

So love your family, your friends, your pets, your gardens. Love your job or your hobby or your raison d’ etre, whatever it is. Love sunsets and the smell of rain and yourself, and don’t love these as something to do as a placeholder until the buzzing, romantic love comes, but love these as things worth loving all in themselves.

It’s fucking hard some days. The dark 3 am’s still come sometimes. But most days, I am so much more at peace knowing that I am not incomplete or waiting, but that my life, if it ended today, is worth it because of the platonic, familial, friendship love I have shared. And if the other kind does come someday, that’ll be nice, but it won’t make any of the others less. It’ll just be caramel sauce on a sundae–tasty and wonderful, but the sundae was perfect without it too.

sarahviehmann

I needed this today.

purrrcrastination

omgthatdress

Putting these up for anyone who needs them today.

Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life by Susan Forward

Why Does he DO That: Inside The Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft

superopinionated

Cannot recommend WDHDT highly enough. I’ve found it helpful not just for romantic relationships, but also for growing up w a “unexplainable/uncontrollable” dad.

IT HAS ALSO BEEN REALLY HELPFUL FOR UNDERSTANDING ONLINE MOB HARASSMENT.

So if you’ve ever been bombarded w threats to be raped/killed, (so…if you’re a minority and you’ve been on the Internet for a while), this book might be useful for getting clarity around the whole entitled, abusive mindset that drives certain kinds of people to behave that way. And by “getting clarity”, I mean (for me) being able to go “oh, that’s what’s happening” and not really feel scared anymore. Or angry, or drawn out into it, or anything.

And if you’re still standing around going “but how does something like GamerGate happen?” or “but why do men hit their wives?” or whatever – please read that book and learn something.

omgthatdress

^^^^ truth WDHDT is fantastic at cutting down MRA bullshit and calling it what it really is

kithnkin

Also recommending

swampseer

Please consider reading these. WDHDT is really, really helpful. And I know some of you are struggling with abusive relationships, friendships, families, etc. You’re not alone. There is help.

heysawbones

Yo. This family holiday, please, please take care of yourself. You aren’t there to be anybody else’s cushion.

robotsandfrippary

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Reading any of these books does not mean you don’t love your parents or family. It’s just self care for helping you cope and not repeat the behaviors.

anna-mator

A gentle reminder that I have Toxic Parents as a FREE PDF if you would like to download it and read it on your own. Take care of yourselves.

heavyweightheart

All the books in this thread are great; adding this one because it was the most helpful to me. Free pdf here

redrola

alwaysmarilynmonroe

Marilyn in 1951.

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