Addiction: When Someone Refuses Rehabilitation Treatment

You fully know that your loved one is abusing drugs or alcohol, however, he or she refuses to get treatment. Or it could be even worse, the loved one refuses to acknowledge that a problem with drugs or alcohol exists. It's terrifying to watch a person you love damage him/herself with drug or alcohol addiction.

Although addiction is a dangerous and illogical disease, your loved one is not beyond the possibility of a full recovery. There are steps you can take to help guide the addict or alcoholic towards the path of recovery and sobriety.

Stop Enabling their Drug or Alcohol Abuse

You may be unintentionally enabling an addict or alcoholic by supporting or covering up for them. You could be providing cheap housing and in turn, the addict spends whatever money they have on alcohol or drugs. You may be giving them small amounts of cash when the addict begs and claims that funds are tight.

Are you doing work that the alcoholic or addict neglects? This could something as innocent as doing their laundry or cleaning their room. When you continue to enable the addict, he or she cannot realize the ramifications of their addiction. Removing your help or support makes the addict or alcoholic have to work harder to keep up their habit and eventually, they will finally understand that their addiction is unfeasible.

Take Drastic Measures

You can threaten the addict or alcoholic all you want but unless you follow through, those threats will not make the addicted person enter rehabilitation. Establishing boundaries lets the addicted individual know what type of behavior you expect and that you're serious about leading them into treatment.

The ramifications will vary for addicts but start with small actions such as removing drugs or alcohol from the home or refusing contact with addict when he or she is high or drunk. Depending on the severity and length of the addiction, you may have to take even further drastic measures such as

• Moving out
• Contacting the authorities
• Prohibiting the addict or alcoholic from seeing your children

The boundaries that you set should be forceful enough to want to drive your addicted loved one to enter drug or alcohol treatment by recognizing that their addiction is not only harming themselves, but their family as well.

Be Ready for Emotional Appeals

We've established that addiction is a vicious disease that effects the emotional and mental well-being of addicts and alcoholics. Addicted people will lie and exaggerate, claiming they were never "addicted," or only used drugs "recreationally." Alcoholics or addicts could use threats, demanding that you help them or they will break off all ties with you.

As damaging as emotional exploitation and fallout can be, once you have determined that your loved one needs to receive residential treatment, you cannot falter. A drug addict or alcoholic will use all the emotional weight they have to continue to feed their substance abuse. You can break the cycle of addiction by refusing to offer the addicted person your help until they have entered treatment.

The life of drug or alcohol addiction is not simple -- especially when a loved one is addicted. You must realize that even though the addict or alcoholic refuses to get treatment, there is still hope ahead for a full recovery.

If your loved one is addicted to drugs or alcohol, and you need help finding them the perfect treatment center, call (877) 804-1531 to go over possible facilities today.