Clinically Reviewed by Dr. Matin Hemmat LPCC, CADC.
If you love someone and they are in trouble, it is human nature (for good people) to want to help. Actually, you don’t even have to love someone to want to help. If you see someone stuck in quicksand, a reasonable person will try to pull them out. The problem is when addiction is involved. There are so many problems and so many needs it can sometimes be hard to know when you are helping and when you are enabling addiction.
The way to look at it is this: addiction has consequences. Those might be legal, financial, professional (or school-related). It’s not hard to list them out. Maybe getting a DUI, fired from a job, or owing everyone money.
What Is Enabling Addiction?
Put plainly, enabling addiction is any behavior—often driven by kindness and compassion—that helps a loved one escape the consequences of their behavior. And once you do it, like a stray cat that got a leftover can of tuna, your loved one knows just where to go to get the help they need to keep their addiction going strong.
Enabling prevents your loved one from encountering the critical consequences needed to recognize harmful behaviors and initiate change. It keeps the fires of addiction stoked and burning strong.
Helping vs. Enabling
Let’s look again at the quicksand analogy. If you want to help someone stuck in quicksand, give them a rope. You identify tools that can help them find a way out of the dire circumstances they find themselves in.
On the other hand, you could jump in with them. Get mired in their issue, and let them grab onto your back as you pull everyone out. And you both go down together.
Helping helps …
Helping a person with an addiction respects the other’s autonomy. It is anything that offers a clear path toward healthier choices. Real support for a person with a substance use disorder maintains boundaries that protect everyone involved.
Enabling soothes …
The act of enabling is an act of soothing discomfort. And while it might help a person feel good temporarily, it erodes personal responsibility. This is another crazy vicious cycle for a person with an addiction because now they have something else in their life reinforcing the addiction. Enabling rewards negative patterns rather than encouraging adaptive changes.
What Does Enabling Addiction Look Like?
Spotting enabling behaviors isn’t always straightforward. It wears kindness as camouflage, so let’s illuminate it:
- Consistently covering or making excuses for addictive behaviors.
- Providing financial support used directly or indirectly for addictive substances.
- Neglecting personal needs to focus entirely on managing your loved one’s addiction.
- Avoiding conflict or consequences by smoothing over mistakes or shielding your loved one from discomfort.
- Rationalizing addictive behaviors, minimizing their severity.
Why Enabling Causes Issues
Enabling addiction builds the addiction. Addiction looks for anything relatively within reach to help it get to its all-consuming goal: getting high. When you give your loved one money to pay off their dealer, when you give them rides after their DUI, when you give them a rent-free place to live after they lose their job, you are inadvertently giving them a bridge back to their fix.
It interrupts the natural progression of life where you fall and learn how to walk better because of it. There are even times when a ride in a cop car, even a couple of days in jail, can be the necessary wake-up.
Compassion Without the Cushioning
If you want to offer support, real support that does not enable addiction, it is important to hold compassion and accountability side by side. It’s like baking bread—you need warmth and softness, yes, but also a sturdy pan for structure.
Genuine support can involve listening without rescuing, empathizing without excusing, and reminding them of their strength to seek help themselves. Sometimes, the most loving response is, “I love you deeply, but I won’t protect you from the consequences of your choices.” It comes down to healthy boundaries.
Boundaries: The Art of Loving Limits
Setting boundaries might feel harsh at first, like refusing to let a toddler touch a hot stove. It’s tough love, grounded deeply in care. Consider boundaries as clear, compassionate lines in the sand. You might say:
- “I’m not willing to give you money if it’s supporting unhealthy choices.”
- “I won’t cover for you when your addiction impacts your work or relationships.”
- “I’ll help you find treatment, but I can’t support behaviors that hurt us both.”
Healthy boundaries help establish incentives for the brain to adapt to new behaviors.
They communicate confidence, clarity, and compassion, providing a stable foundation rather than shifting sand.
When It’s Time to Reach Out
Enabling addiction might seem like kindness, but kindness without truth is incomplete. If your loved one needs help, guidance is available. Our outpatient services are often the perfect blend of structure and flexibility for individuals to find lasting recovery.
Peninsula Health Center in the South Bay area has addiction specialists who understand deeply, scientifically, and compassionately how change unfolds. Reach out and talk with us. It may feel like a small step, but meaningful recovery often starts quietly in moments just like this. Call Peninsula today: 866-934-8228.
