Are you and your other half partners in addiction? When romantic partners are both struggling with addiction, it can seem like the disease is twice as powerful. In many ways, it is. So often, couples try and fail to get clean and sober. One common occurrence is that when one person wants to stop using, the other doesn’t, and then it switches.
The addicted couple is often volatile. You may love each other dearly, but the drugs and alcohol can have you behaving toward each other in ways that make you feel deeply regretful and ashamed.
Addiction Is A Family Disease
You may or may not have heard this before, but most people agree that it’s true. Addiction creates a ripple effect that impacts the entire family. Not only that, but addiction is often passed down through the generations. There are many reasons for this. Environmental exposure and lifestyle, as well as genetic components, can lead addiction to “run in the family.”
Your addiction affects you, it affects your relationship, and if you have children, it affects them, too. Children of addicts and alcoholics are more likely to drop out of school, perform poorly in school, act out, get in fights, use drugs and alcohol, and marry an addict or alcoholic — even if they themselves aren’t.
Adult children of addicts and alcoholics will often gravitate toward people who use, and actively or even non-active addicts will unknowingly or unconsciously seek each other out.
Sometimes, it seems as though the addiction grows stronger when you become a couple. It certainly becomes more difficult to quit. Life’s pressures and challenges only seem to exacerbate the problem. Financial problems, difficulties maintaining family responsibilities and struggles with health can all take their toll on even the most devoted couples.
Issues that frequently come up with the using couple can include domestic violence and infidelity. For two people to overcome these issues and get clean and sober, outside help is often needed.
Breaking The Cycle of Addiction
It is possible to break the cycle of addiction for you, your partner and your family. The most important thing to realize is that you only have control over one person: you. With that said, you can team up with your partner to overcome addiction and come out the other side stronger.
Breaking the cycle of addiction can begin with you, and will have a ripple effect that may extend to your children and your children’s children. You can make a decision to begin a new way of life.
Getting Past The Fear Of Rehab
Unfortunately, one thing that holds couples back from getting themselves help is fear. When one person gets clean and sober, he or she fears the using partner will leave. The using partner fears that their clean and sober partner will leave, or that it threatens their own using lifestyle. This creates a vicious cycle. The only way to break it is for each individual in the relationship to decide for themselves that they want a new way of life.
How Rehab Can Help You
A treatment center serves a multitude of purposes. It gives you an opportunity to heal and get away from an unhealthy environment. It also provides services such as counseling and education that allow you to learn more about yourself, addiction and underlying issues that contribute to addiction. It also gives you an opportunity to meet other people in recovery so you can begin to develop a social circle of clean and sober friends.
For so many people, treatment is the first time they have ever had the opportunity to work on themselves. They may have spent so many years caring for or worrying about others, or just trying to survive that they have never had the chance. Treatment gives you that chance, and allows you to learn new communication skills, life skills and ways to cope with life without resorting to drugs and alcohol.
But, how do you work on yourselves as individuals, and also as a couple? You must find a treatment center that acknowledges the importance of relationship and family, and provides services to help you both heal, together.
Finding Addiction Help As A Couple
At Broadway Treatment Center , we recognize that addiction is a family disease, and that it is important to support the family in recovery. Couples should have access to services that support them as individuals, but also in their relationship.
Broadway Treatment Center is an award-winning drug and alcohol rehab that offers inpatient treatment, intensive outpatient and a variety of cutting edge treatments and therapies designed to help you overcome addiction and build a strong foundation in your recovery. We also offer recovery services for couples that include couples counseling. For more information about our program, contact us at 714-433-8218 for a free consultation.
