Living With An Addict

Recovery brings a lot of changes and upheaval. Couples can grow and thrive throughout recovery by being mindful, establishing boundaries and expressing needs.

• Recovery Support Services Help Enormously!
• Mentoring: Helping Others Build Recovery
• Improving Recovery Willpower
• Recovery: Learning Life Moderation
• Recovery: You Have a Fresh Start, Not a Failed Past

What do you do when the person you love gets consumed by a disease (addiction) that's beyond your control? How do we know when it's time to leave and how do you manage to adjust to life without your actively addicted partner?

• Couples Counseling - Differing Intimacy Needs
• The 7 Habits of Happy Couples
• Job Loss & Marriage - 8 Coping Tips
• Good Listener? Take a Listening Skills Self Test
• Need Couples Counseling? Test Your Relationship

Learn how setting personal boundaries and demanding accountability works better than trying to manipulate behavioral change.

• Parental Rehab Involvement
• Is Marijuana Maintenance a Good Idea?
• AA - Learn How It Keeps You Sober
• Tough Love - for Dual Diagnosis
• Milk Thistle for Alcoholic Liver Diseases

Being trapped is most often a state of mind. Are you looking for answers that you know deep down don’t exist? The simple truth is hard to hear.

• After Drug Addiction, Can You Ever Drink Again?
• Too Smart for the 12 Steps? Why Showing Up Matters
• Understanding the 'Dry Drunk' & Steps to Permanent Change
• Alcohol Addiction - the Straight Facts
• The Pink Cloud & Other Recovery Mistakes

The needs of siblings of active addicts and alcoholics are often overlooked. This is especially true when siblings are adolescents and young adults. Supporting the needs of all family members individually is the key to maintaining a healthy family unit.

• Grandma's Addicted - What to Do?
• How to Write an Intervention Letter in 5 Steps
• How to Build a Supportive Recovery Family
• No Burnout: Tips for Living with a Bipolar Sufferer
• Haiti Family Members

The most powerful tool is the truth. Mincing words or walking on eggshells are common mistakes 'affected others' make. Simple, direct, and clear communication gives us our best chance to be heard.

• Issues of Confidentiality During Rehab Treatment
• "Going Deep" in Dual Diagnosis Treatment
• Prayers for Families of Alcoholics or Addicts
• Recovering Teens: 7 Ways to Improve Communication
• How Old Are You?

Supporting those who keep going back out: how to maintain hope and effectively cope when a loved one just can't seem to stay sober.

• Dealing with Relapse and Shame after Long Sobriety
• No Relapse! 7 Exercise Excuses Answered
• Relapse Prevention Programs - The Basics
• How to Stay Sober when Scared, Mad or Sad
• Reworking the 12 Steps After a Relapse

When thinking about marrying a person in early recovery, how can you know that recovery will last? Short answer is - you can't! But you can learn to accept your powerlessness over the situation, make your own life manageable and set healthy boundaries.

• Romantic Relationships in Drug Treatment
• Why Interventions Fail: Avoiding Pitfalls

When adult children battle addiction, how do you support your grandchildren without enabling their parents? Read on for the do's and dont's.

• Entering Recovery as a Single Parent
• Long-Term Effects of Growing Up with Addicted Parents
• Addictive Personality? It's Human Being, Not Doing
• Use + Impulsivity + Compulsivity = Addiction
• Why Addiction Is Not a Choice

Supporting recovery - you're probably unsure about what's helpful and appropriate. The list below may surprise you. Here's how you can help.

• Understanding How the Alcoholic Thinks
• Preparation for Successful Interventions
• Drug Treatment for Doctors: Alternative Solutions
• Recovery + ADHD: Start by Improving Your Focus
• Protecting Your Privacy in Recovery

Moving past guilt and powerlessness as we wait for adult children to find recovery.

• Addiction: When Adult Children Move Back Home
• Your Teen Hates You: Now What?
• How Bystanders Can Stop Bullying
• Teaching Children to Reject Violence
• Warning Signs of a Bully Problem

You have to let them face their natural consequences, but does that mean there's nothing you can do to help? Fortunately, you CAN support without enabling and your assistance today can make a big difference for their tomorrow.

• A Family Guide: Support Without Codependence
• Addicted Celebrities on TV: Suffering as Entertainment?
• Antidepressants + Alcohol: SSRIs in Treatment?
• Are You Addicted? Take the APA's Test to Find Out
• The DSM-5: Has Your Diagnosis Changed?

In the midst of active addiction and early recovery, the impact of the disease upon children is often underestimated. Thinking about how children are negatively affected gives us insight into how to support them.

• How to Help Kids Recover From Living with Addiction
• Understanding Addiction - What You Need to Know
• A Second Adolescence: When Seniors Use Drugs
• Helping Children Cope
• Addiction Risk Factors

Your partner's in recovery... now what? Tips on rebuilding a relationship while making your own needs a priority: building trust - one day at a time, setting measurable goals to work toward, taking care of yourself... rather than your partner.

• Forgive! 3 Ways Unresolved Anger Kills Relationships
• Need Treatment? Find Evidence Based Therapies!
• Couples Therapy: Getting Sober as a Team
• Relationships: Dealing with Chronic Ailments
• Couples Counseling - Going Solo?

As difficult as it is to love someone in the spiral of addiction, adjusting to life with a person in recovery is no small task either. Many of us found we lost ourselves while loving an addict/alcoholic. Now we start our own journey - one in which we focus on self.

• Recovery Worksheet: Fixing Damaged Relationships
• Counseling: How to Find Love
• How to Be More Assertive in Your Relationship
• Intercultural Relationships - Overcoming Differences
• College - Dealing with Boozing Roommates