If you’ve been living with an addiction for quite some time now, you might be wondering about getting help for yourself in this situation. In many cases, overcoming drug addiction can be too difficult to attempt on your own. This is why rehabilitation centers are put into place for those who want to make a fresh start for themselves. Receiving professional help for overcoming a drug addiction can help you to get over the problem and live a better life. Before you seek treatment, however, it’s important that you let your loved ones know about your addiction.
Why Bother Telling Loved Ones?
You might be wondering why you should even bother telling your loved ones if you’re planning on going into treatment anyway. For starters, your loved ones can act as your support and guiding light throughout the process. Most relatives will be concerned about your well-being, and they will keep an eye on you both before, during and after you’ve gone to rehab for your drug addiction. In a way, relatives can help to keep you in line and off of drugs. They can’t do this, though, if they don’t know that there is a problem, to begin with for you. By telling your loved ones, you may also feel more motivation and determination to do well when in rehab and after you get out of the facility.
How to Tell Your Loved Ones
Now that you’ve made the decision that it’s best to tell your loved ones about your drug addiction, it’s time to figure out the best way to do this. To start, it might be beneficial to tell the loved one with whom you’re closest with. For example, if you’re closest with your sister or brother, you’ll want to let them know before anyone else. By telling a close relative or friend, you are able to open up more to them than someone you’re not as close to.
A good way to start is to invite your relative over for a visitor out to lunch. Ask them how they are doing, and when they ask how you are doing, this might be a good time to let them know that you have an addiction to drugs. Let them know that you have this addiction and that you’re trying to get help for it by going to a rehab center. Your loved one will most likely try their best to help you, but don’t be surprised if they ask a lot of questions during the conversation. They might ask questions pertaining to your drug use, where you’re getting the drugs, how long you’ve been taking them and if you’re experiencing any health issues. Being prepared to answer these questions and knowing that your loved one will probably ask them will help the conversation to go a lot more smoothly for you.
Another thing that you’ll want to consider is the fact that your close relative or friend may tell others about your conversation, especially if it is related to an addiction that you’ve been dealing with for quite some time. Even a very close relative who promises to keep this a secret might tell others, so this is another thing that you’ll want to be carefully prepared for. In fact, it might help to plan to tell all of your close loved ones so that the secretive talking behind your back isn’t even an issue. You can do this by telling one loved one at a time, or you can sit down with everyone and discuss the problem.
Telling your loved ones about addiction may seem like an incredibly daunting and almost impossible task for you. This is something that you’ve probably been living with for a while now and has kept secret this whole time. Believe it or not, you may find that one or more of your loved ones even come out during the conversation and says that they had a feeling you were dealing with this issue. Drug addictions can often be difficult to hide from those you’re close with, so don’t be terribly surprised if most of your relatives or friends already know that there has been a problem.