How to Help a Loved One with Addiction

Nobody teaches you how to do this.

There's no class that prepares you for the moment your kid looks you in the eye and lies. No handbook for when the credit card statement shows charges you can't explain. No orientation packet for discovering your spouse has been hiding something for months.

You're supposed to just figure it out. So you do what any loving person would do. You try to help. You cover the rent. You make excuses to the boss. You believe the promises because believing feels better than the alternative.

And then one day you realize nothing is getting better. It might even be getting worse.

If that's where you are, this page exists for you.

We've spent over twenty years walking with families through addiction. Not as therapists or academics, but as a ministry that's fielded thousands of phone calls from people in exactly your situation. Moms who've run out of options. Grandparents raising grandkids because their own children can't. Spouses watching someone they love become someone they don't recognize.

What follows isn't theory. It's what we've learned from being in the trenches. What actually helps. What feels like helping but makes things worse. And how to take care of yourself when the person you love won't take care of themselves.

The Hardest Truth: You Can't Fix Them

This is where most families get stuck.

Love wants to rescue. Every instinct screams to jump in, absorb the consequences, smooth things over, buy more time. When you love someone, standing back while they self-destruct feels like abandonment.

But here's what two decades of experience has taught us: you cannot love someone into sobriety. You cannot control their choices. You cannot want recovery more than they do and expect it to stick.

That's not permission to give up. It's permission to stop carrying weight that was never yours to carry.

Your job isn't to fix them. Your job is to love them without funding their destruction, hold boundaries without abandoning hope, and keep yourself intact while the storm rages. That's harder than fixing them would be. But it's the only thing that's actually in your control.

Understanding Enabling

One of the most painful realizations for families is discovering that their help has been hurting.

Enabling means removing the natural consequences that might otherwise push someone toward change. It's not about intent. You can love deeply and still enable. In fact, the people who enable most are usually the ones who love most.

Paying rent so they don't end up homeless. Calling in sick to their job so they don't get fired. Making excuses to family members so nobody finds out how bad it's gotten. Each of these actions feels like love in the moment. But each one builds a cushion between choices and outcomes. And that cushion can keep someone comfortable in a place that should have become unbearable long ago.

Recognizing enabling isn't about guilt. It's about seeing clearly so you can love in a way that actually helps.

When It's Time to Intervene

Some families reach a point where a direct conversation becomes necessary. Not another argument. Not another plea. A planned, coordinated intervention where the people who matter most come together with one message and one offer of help.

Interventions aren't what you've seen on television. The dramatic confrontations and tearful breakthroughs make for good TV but lousy strategy. Real interventions work best when they're calm, prepared, and focused on love rather than accusation.

An intervention doesn't guarantee a yes. Sometimes the person walks out. Sometimes they agree and change their mind by morning. But it draws a line. It puts words to what everyone has been tiptoeing around. And it makes clear what's being offered and what's at stake.

Finding the Right Program

If your loved one is willing to get help, the next question is where. The landscape of recovery programs is overwhelming. Secular, faith-based, 30-day, long-term, inpatient, outpatient. Everyone claims to have the answer.

We've written a guide on how to choose a faith-based recovery program that walks through the key questions to ask. Cost, length, approach, aftercare, and what "faith-based" actually means in practice.

For families exploring Christian rehab centers, the range is wider than most people realize. Some programs have a chaplain on staff and call it faith-based. Others, like Teen Challenge, integrate Scripture, discipleship, and spiritual formation into every aspect of daily life. Neither is automatically right or wrong. But families should understand what they're signing up for.

When Recovery Doesn't Go as Planned

Here's the part nobody wants to talk about: sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes they go to treatment and leave early. Sometimes they finish the program and relapse six months later. Sometimes they say no and keep using.

Setbacks in recovery are common. Relapse rates across every treatment model are significant. That's not a reason to give up hope. It's a reason to hold hope loosely and keep your own life intact regardless of what they choose.

Recovery is rarely a straight line. The person who relapses after six months of sobriety isn't back at square one. Something was built. Something was learned. The road forward may be longer than you hoped, but it's still a road.

Your job in those seasons is the same as it was before: love without enabling, hold boundaries without abandoning, and take care of yourself. You cannot control the outcome. But you can control how you show up.

Taking Care of Yourself

This might be the most neglected part of loving someone through addiction.

Families pour everything into the person who's struggling and leave nothing for themselves. They skip meals. They lose sleep. They isolate from friends because they're embarrassed or exhausted or both. They put their own mental health on the back burner because it feels selfish to focus on themselves when someone they love is in crisis.

But here's the truth: you cannot pour from an empty cup. And if you destroy yourself trying to save someone else, you won't be there when they finally turn around.

Get support. Find a group for families of addicts. Talk to a counselor. Lean on your church. Stop pretending you're fine when you're not. The healthier you are, the more you'll have to offer when it matters most.

You Don't Have to Figure This Out Alone

We don't operate a residential program. But we've spent decades learning the landscape, building relationships with ministries we trust, and walking alongside families trying to navigate impossible situations.

We can help you think through your options. We can connect you with programs that fit your situation. We can be a sounding board when you don't know what to do next.

Loving someone through addiction is one of the hardest things a family can face. But you don't have to face it alone.

Related Resources

What Is an Intervention? A Family Guide

What Does Enabling Mean? A Guide for Families

Christian Rehab Centers: A Family Guide

Get Help for Your Family