How to Support Your Loved One’s Methadone Addiction
Have you noticed your loved one becoming addicted to methadone? There are
always ways to get them the help they need. They might need your help to accept
their addiction to methadone. However, you also have to take care of yourself
to be there for them when they need you the most. Learn more about how you can
remain strong and support your loved one through their recovery in the
following guide.
How Your Loved One Gets Addicted
Your loved one might have had a health condition where their doctor prescribes them methadone for pain relief. It’s also a well-known drug to help people fight off their withdrawal symptoms to narcotics during the detox process.
Doctors can prescribe them in rehab treatment centers, but the addicts might not realize all the common side effects of methadone.Some of the side effects might include having a headache, gaining weight, mood changes, flushing, stomach pain, vision problems, sleeping issues, urinating difficulty, and dry mouth. These might not sound too dangerous, but methadone is highly addictive. While your loved one is seeking treatment for another addiction, they could end up getting hooked on methadone as well.
However, your loved one could start stealing other people’s methadone prescription pills after they get out of rehab. Whether it’s their only addiction or a double addiction to drugs, you might be their only hope in admitting that they have a problem.
Calmly Talking to Your Loved One
Before you think about organizing an intervention for your loved one, consider calmly talking to them. When you realize the signs of their methadone addiction, you can discuss how it’s negatively changing them. It could be affecting their job situation where they don’t turn up for work or get fired for being late too many times.
Once it starts to alter their lives, you can help them by talking to them about their addiction and make them see it’s not good for them to continue this behavior and habit. You don’t want to wait until it starts affecting their health or creating a criminal record.
Arranging an Intervention
If talking to them doesn’t work, organizing an intervention is your next option. You should arrange it by setting a specific time, date, and place. Then, you can figure out who you want an the intervention, which are usually the people who are affected by the addict’s behavior. This could be their siblings, parents, friends, or co-workers.
It’s a good idea to rehearse and make sure everyone knows what they are going to say during the intervention. When you organize an intervention properly and have a professional interventionist there, there is a 90% chance of convincing your loved one to seek some kind of help afterward. It might take a while for them to take action, but they at least know that they need help to overcome their addiction.
How Do You Get Help?
Most people might not realize that those who have loved ones with drug addiction, might need their own help. There are a few ways you can get the help you need to be able to stay supportive of your loved one’s addiction issues.
- Individual Therapy
You can always seek therapy from your regular therapist or from someone who specializes in helping spouses of drug addicts. A therapist who specializes in this could be more beneficial since they have more experience in dealing with other patients who have similar issues as you do.
You might start to hold in your own feelings on your spouse’s addiction so you might need an outlet or advice on how you can get through this. You might not be the one who is going through rehab to stay sober, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have your own issues to sort out.
Bottling it all in won’t help your relationship, especially if you think you have to be the strong one. You might end up resenting your spouse, so having a professional therapist can help express your emotions or reveal your true feelings about your spouse’s recovery process.
- Couples Therapy
It’ll probably be after your loved one recovers from their addiction before you consider couples therapy. However, this could help you build a stronger connection to each other since you are both experiencing this together. Having a partner go through drug addiction can become stressful on the relationship, so couples therapy can help both of you sort out your issues.
Couples therapy doesn’t necessarily have to happen when your relationship seems in trouble. Instead, it can stabilize the relationship before things get out of control. Both of you can discuss whether you want to do this or not since it’s not required for an addict to do this with their spouse, but it can help you both communicate your feelings in a safe environment.
- Nar-Anon Meetings
This is similar to NA meetings except it’s for the loved ones of addicts. Nar-Anon (Narcotics Anonymous) meetings can help you seek comfort from others who are going through the same thing. You might feel like sharing with others who are going through the same things you are, which can form bonds and relationships with one another.
You can express all the frustrations, anger, or whatever you feel when you are worried about your loved one. It’s a safe place not to receive judgment since these people can relate to what you go through every day.
Living with a Methadone Addict
After your loved one goes to rehab and recovers, this doesn’t mean their addiction is cured or should be swept under the rug. This is only the beginning of their lifelong recovery from their methadone addiction. Your loved one should try to go to NA meetings to receive support from other drug addicts in your community. These meetings can be very beneficial to all drug addicts because it allows people to listen to each other’s struggles and achievements with their own drug addiction.
Once a drug addict has been sober for a while, they can become a sponsor to others in the same program. This can allow your loved one to maintain their own addiction since they are helping others stay sober. Helping people who have to start from the beginning of their drug recovery can help them stay strong and sustain their own sobriety when they have their own struggles in life.
Sponsoring someone can also make them feel good about themselves and make it less likely that they will relapse in the future. Especially, when they have a group of people who they trust to rely on when times are getting difficult in their career or social life.
Your Continued Support
Meanwhile, you need to support their decision to continue going to these NA meetings and being a sponsor. This could mean that they have to leave at a moment’s notice to help support others in their NA meetings. You might have your own struggles to deal with when it comes to them putting the NA meetings above other things in your life because it helps them stay sober. Otherwise, they could end up relapsing and go back to their old and destructive habits.
Helping your spouse or loved one through their methadone addiction can be a long and challenging journey. You might be their only hope in accepting that they have an addiction issue. Being able to seek your own professional help might be what keeps your relationship going and reinforce your support for them. You can find the courage and strength to get them to accept their problem and help them receive the best rehab treatment possible!