When a loved one is dealing with an addiction, it can be hard to know what to do. Drug and alcohol addiction can completely change a person’s personality. If untreated, then they can lead to serious health problems becoming manifest, also.

If your loved one is addicted to drugs or alcohol, then you need to take action. The sooner you intervene, the faster you can get them treated and back to normal. However, you should know that it’s not easy helping somebody to overcome their addictions, especially if they don’t want to.

This post will tell you how you can help a loved one defeat addiction once and for all.

Treatment Centre

The most effective way to treat your loved one’s addiction is to sign them up for rehab. A rehab clinic (also known as a treatment centre) can provide your loved one with a safe and comfortable environment, where they can work through their problems. One form of treatment that’s been proven to be highly effective is holistic treatment. You can click here to learn more about it. A holistic treatment centre won’t cost you any more than an ordinary rehab clinic would. Before signing your loved one up for rehab, however, you first need to sit down and talk to them about their addiction. If they aren’t ready to overcome it yet, then they could just run away from rehab, wasting your money.

Damage Limitation

When a person drifts into addiction, they tend to destroy everything around them. If your loved one is in the early stages of addiction, then you need to do everything that you can to prevent them from pushing people away and destroying their life. The sooner that you get them professional help and make them understand what they are doing to themselves, the better. A good way to limit the damage they are doing is to honestly explain to people what they’re going through. Addicts lie, steal, and cheat without ever stopping to tell the people they hurt and why they are hurting them.

Open Conversations

Have open conversations with your family member, exploring the roots of their addiction. Most addicts will be more than happy to discuss what’s behind their addiction. Sometimes it is trauma, and other times it is an unhealthy interest in drugs and alcohol, usually caused by teenage repression or fascination with society’s criminal elements. If you are able to identify what’s causing your loved one’s addictions you can then work with them to help them to sort their life out. Try as hard as you can to encourage your loved one to go to rehab, too.

Finding Normalcy

Once your loved one has stopped using drugs or alcohol, you need to help them to find normalcy in their life. Returning to normal society is one of the hardest things for addicts to do because many of them live in a completely different world to us. Finding normalcy is essential to your loved one’s mental health. Help them to get a job, re-establish connections with old friends, and even find a relationship. Make sure that they stay away from bad influences when they are integrating back into society, though. If you don’t keep them out of trouble’s way, then they will find it.

Negative Influences

Following on from the last point made in the previous section, you need to help your loved one to stay away from negative influencers. If you don’t help them to stay on the straight and narrow, then they will no doubt find their way back into negative circles, hang with old friends, and then drift back into drugs and alcoholism. When a person first returns from rehab they are at their weakest. All it takes is a little push to tip them over the edge. However, while it is important to look after your loved one, you also need to avoid suffocating them, because this can push them right back into the arms of people who encourage their addiction.

Removing Triggers

If your family member is staying with you and has stopped using drugs or alcohol, then you need to keep them away from triggers. You first need to identify what your loved one’s triggers are. With certain people, specific songs or artists make them feel like doing drugs again. With others, it is smells, noises, conversations, or memories. The best way to identify your loved one’s triggers is to ask them outright. Then, you can avoid exposing them to them at home.

Alcoholism and drug addiction can destroy a person’s life, or at least change it irrevocably. If you have a family member who has addictions, then you need to help them to overcome them before they do too much damage to themselves.