Do_You_Need_NarAnon

(A Questionnaire for Parents, Spouse, Relatives, etc.)

Do you find yourself making excuses, lying, or covering up for your addict?
Do you have reason not to trust the addict in your life?
Is it becoming difficult for you to believe his/her explanations?
Do you lie awake worrying about the addict in your life?
Is this person missing school often without your knowledge?
Is this person missing work and the bills piling up?
Are the savings mysteriously missing?
Are the unanswered questions causing hostility and undermining your relationship or marriage?
Are you asking yourself "What's Wrong?" and "Is it my fault?"
Are your suspicions turning you into a detective and are you afraid of what you might find out?
Are normal family disagreements becoming hostile and violent?
Are you canceling social functions with vague excuses?
Are you becoming increasingly reluctant to invite friends to your home?
Is concern for your spouse, child or friend causing you headaches, a knotty stomach and extreme anxiety?
Is your spouse, child or friend easily irritated by minute matters? Does your whole life seem a nightmare?
Are you unable to discuss the situation with friends or relatives because of the embarrassment?
Are your attempts at control frustrating?
Do you over compensate and try not to make waves?
Do you keep trying to make things better and nothing helps?
Is the lifestyle of this person changing? Do you ever think they may be using drugs?

If you have answered YES to four or more of these questions, NAR-ANON may be able to give you the answers you are looking for.

What is enabling?

Enabling is doing for others what they are capable of doing for themselves. When we enable addicts, we prevent them from experiencing the consequences of their own actions. When we do this, we discourage them from learning from their own mistakes. This, in turn, prevents them from realizing they have a problem.

The addict has made drugs the focus of their daily activity, letting responsibility and common sense fall by the wayside. When we continue to do even the simple things for an addict we care about, little is left to motivate them to enter or rediscover their recovery.

How do we enable?

We enable addicts by doing things such as:

Paying their bills, making car payments, covering bounced checks, paying bail, paying traffic tickets;
Making excuses for their behavior, changing appointments, calling employers on absenteeism, writing late or absentee excuses to schools, covering up for missed family functions;
Providing the addict with money, clothing, housing and food;
Caring for the addict's family by allowing them to live with us, taking their children to school, babysitting, etc.

What does enabling do for us?

Enabling gives us a false sense of control. We do what society tells us a "good" father, mother, husband, wife, son, daughter or friend should do, but we are not getting the results we desire. We feel frustrated and resentful. Because the addict's behavior does not change, we think we have failed.

Our actions, done with the best of intentions, have back-fired.

What is the difference between helping and enabling?

We need to look deep inside ourselves to determine the difference between helping and enabling. "How do I feel when I offer my help? What's in it for me?" Checking your motives will help you decide when you are truly helping or when you are enabling.

Can you enable an addict (or anyone) who is not using?

We can enable anyone, using or not. Our enabling behavior patterns are not directed solely toward the addict and/or the addict's sobriety. Enabling deprives anyone of experiencing the consequences of their own behavior.

Remember, when taking responsibility for our own behavior each one of us must find our own path. Experience teaches us that it is useless to lay out a path for someone else to follow.

Helping the Addict

Your role as helper is:

not to DO things for the person you are helping, but to BE things
not to try to train and change the addicts actions, but to train and change your reactions
to change your negatives to positives
to change fear to faith
to change contempt for what the addict does to respect for the potential within the addict
to change rejection to release with love
to try not to make the addict fit a standard or image or expect him to measure up to or down from that
standard, but to give the addict an opportunity to become themselves
to develop the best within the addict, regardless of what that best may be
to change dominance to encouragement
to change panic to serenity
to change false-hope, self-centered to real hope, God-centered
to change the rebellion of despair to the energy of personal revolution
to change driving to guidance
to change self-justification to self-understanding