How Can I Help a Friend With a Substance Abuse Problem?

Question by wendy: How can I help a friend with a substance abuse problem?
He is really heading down hill.. He says he’s out of control and he wants to stop but nothing he has done has helped. He’s going to lose everything, should I let him or should I try to support him and help in whatever way I can?

Best answer:

Answer by EDtherapist
I’m sorry to hear that he is struggling, and that it’s having an impact on you. All you can do is to point out what you are noticing and encourage him to get help. Educate yourself so that you know what helps him and what hurts him. I know it’s difficult, but you don’t want to be doing anything that might enable him to continue in his addiction.

Here’s a link to a therapist search. You can search for therapists who specialize in substance abuse treatment:
http://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/prof_search.php

Also, a link to narcotics anonymous:
http://www.na.org/

You might find it helpful to attend some al-anon meetings for support for you.
http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/

Good luck!

Answer by Mind Cleaner
Just tell him the secret of addiction. It has saved me too. Here it is:

The Death of Addiction to Drugs
and the Beginning of Addiction to Life

There’s no escape from addiction. Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you have – you can’t but have one thing – addiction.
You have no decision about whether you want to be addicted or not. You’re not free at all in this sense. However, you have a say only in what you want to be addicted to.

We all talk and think of a concept called freedom. We’ve already developed a rich phraseology with this word as the foundation, namely, freedom from want, freedom from terrorism, freedom from anxiety, freedom from political oppression, freedom from diseases . . . eventually, freedom from thought and desire.

Even if we were free from all hazards of life, we could never have freedom from our concept of freedom. We can never be free from our desire for freedom. Our inner drive for attaining freedom of one kind or another can never leave us free until we feel we’ve exhausted all our disposable energy in attempting to achieve it.

Humans are bound so much by the thought of freedom that they’re even prepared to accept death to fulfill their desire for it.
Why is that? What makes us feel bound and accept subtler bindings – often unwittingly – to achieve the freedom that we believe we should have? If freedom is not free, what is freedom, then?

Only the right answer to these questions – which are actually to be conceived as a single question if they ever need to be answered – can provide the permanent solution to the problem of addiction. There could be no issue more basic to life than the issue of addiction.
Addiction is there in everybody of us. Only what makes the difference from person to person is that this addiction manifests itself more in some people than in others. And let me tell you in advance that those in whose lives addiction has manifested itself strongly have ample reason to be identified as the relatively developed ones among mankind. Just as all types of glue can’t prove to be very strong in all cases, so all people can’t have the ability to be extraordinarily addicted, the question of addicted to what being an undoubtedly secondary concern.

Why, then, let me ask once more, do we crave so much for freedom? And, again, what are we really addicted? This article will show you where in your mind you have the answer.

In fact, we are, and we can only be, addicted to our idea of freedom. So if there is to be any idea of freedom from addiction then there’s no choice not to say that freedom itself is the primary addiction. It is this essential tendency of the mind that gets expressed enveloped by situational agents.

In a dimension, the self is always free, whereas in another dimension, that is, in the dimension of the mind, it feels that it’s not free and so looks for it.

Freedom – whatever it is – is so free in itself that it can look for itself and thereby artificially crate the concept of bondage to do the search through. If it didn’t have the ability to do so, it couldn’t be called freedom. Because only the concept of infinity – as it is conceived in pure mathematics – can absorb these contradictory characteristics in itself, freedom is no other than the Infinity, and addiction the inherent relation of the mind to it.

What we’ve said so far implies that your feeling of addiction is your unconscious love for the Infinity but you’ve consciously orchestrated it in a certain manner of conduct. An addicted person is not free not to be addicted. From the individual’s point of view, addiction means allowing the object of addiction to have a hundred percent power over the mind, at the cost of the freedom of the mind itself.

What one is addicted to determines which side is going to remain free – the mind or the object of addiction. So let’s do some analysis with addiction as it is related to the mind. Are you addicted to something – say, a certain kind of drug? Why? Certainly that’s either because you can avoid a particular thought or feeling in that way or because you have certain sensations that are pleasing to you. Now sit face-to-face with yourself for a while and have an interview with the mind. If it’s a particular thought or feeling that you want to avoid, then find out why you want to do so. Do you consider yourself a coward that you’re afraid of a particular situation or feeling or thought? If you don’t lose something, how will you gain something? If you don’t let go of the small things, how will big things come to your hands?

Or if it’s a thought that you want to evade, then give the matter a second thought. Are you afraid of a thought? Are you afraid of something that you created in your mind? Being the creator, do you want to flee from your creation? You created your thoughts and now they love you and can’t go away from you until you love them and fulfill all their claims on you. Will you still hide yourself from them or try to hide them?

If you fail to take care of your creation, it will destroy you and try to create you anew or transform you into a creator that takes care of their creation.

Or are you addicted to something simply because it gives you pleasing sensations? If yes, then you can earn a lot of knowledge by analyzing this addiction. Any pleasure arising out of any sensations is completely dependent on the substance giving that sensation. Do you want to remain a slave to that substance? Why don’t you say to yourself: “I won’t allow trifling things to give me pleasure. I can’t take an unimportant thing as my enemy.” If, for example, a person far too small as compared to your social status or official power says to your friends and relatives that they consider themselves your personal enemies and if this news goes around in the society, then how will you feel? How does it sound when a rat publicly declares that the great lion, the King of the jungle, is its enemy?
Once you are addicted, you make your pleasure dependent on the addiction. That’s why when you want to withdraw you can’t escape a feeling of pain and uneasiness. That which controls your pleasure has the right to give you pain. Accept it. Shortly you’ll be able to overcome its influence on you.

You must keep in mind that enjoyment is more than bodily feeling. Rather, it’s an attitude. Feeling is dependent on the body, situation, and time, whereas attitude is independent of all externalities – it depends on your intention. Simply say to yourself: I’m happy simply because I believe and know I am. I’m free from the influence of any feeling. If I define my happiness and satisfaction with the color of my feeling, it will change ten times a day and I’ll have to float around on a vast sea of sorrows that I’m not familiar with.

When somebody is addicted to something, they get a lot of pleasure from it. This is what should be the case. Addiction means getting merged with. It is a tendency of the mind to unify the whole universe in it and get merged with the Infinity. That’s why it’s not unusual that when this huge potential is completely spent on a trifling matter it should be a source of concentrated pleasure. But why look at the pleasure only? What about the other side of the coin?
Addiction is nothing but devotion transferred from the source of the mind to its surface. Somebody is devoted to what they are addicted to. Maybe this theory will seem alien to you, but it’s the fact. I don’t want to prove it, though, because it’s you who will see it for yourself. How can I prove something to you which is nowhere but in yourself? Proof only unveils the truth, that which is already there, and doesn’t create it, just as feeling conceals it and doesn’t destroy it. So why bother about any proof? Why not look at the feeling that’s standing in the way of your reason?
When you have pleasure from something, do you need to prove the existence of the object that gives you the pleasure? Isn’t your feeling more than what you could otherwise indicate by a method of proof? Now do the following analytical meditation.

Analytical Meditation

Say to yourself:

My conviction is sufficient as the proof. Proof is only an indirect way to get at the truth. It seldom requires the identity of who is going to prove and who is accepting it. Therefore, when there’s a problem that’s dependent on the person involved in it, what solution can be there except the person’s declaring themselves independent of it and thus attain emancipation?
I am the proof.
I am the answer to any question my mind raises.
I am the solution to any problem my mind creates.
I am the source of the nectar for which my mind can ever be thirsty.
I am so powerful that I can even confine my pleasure to an infinitesimal substance. This is an ability of mine, and not of the substance.
If this is true, then I am also the power that can untangle the mind from any bondage.
I am addicted to the unity of my self.
What peace, what pleasure, what pain, what suffering – all are various dimensions of my self. How can I stay away from my feelings – be it pleasure or pain? Being the totality, how can I narrow myself to a measurable bit of event or information? No journalist can exhaust the hidden message of my mind by reporting on it even for thousands of years. I am so vast that my mere existence influences the ability of the reporter.
My mind is addicted to no other than my own self.
So why should I flee from the addiction?
Rather, I confess that I am addicted to all the dimensions of my self – pleasure, sorrow, pain, responsibility, ethics, values, wealth, charity, leisure, activity, fame, infamy – everything.
I am greater than any particular thing – any particularity. I am greater than death, even. I don’t need to look for it; it looks for me. I am greater than sorrow. It needs me to exist. I need not be afraid of something that is dependent on me.

If I am not afraid of sorrow, why should I be dependent on pleasure? Just as sorrows come to me, so also pleasures will ferret me out if I stay firm in the unity of my mind ? which is often referred to as equanimity. The fact that pleasure runs away from me when I pursue it proves that it wants me to feel that I could get it without running after it. If I do my duties properly but don’t run after any particular thing, it will run after me for its own existence. Why should I empower something to run away from me by running after it?
I am addicted to my identity, integrity, freedom, and own knowledge of myself.

Everything else is addicted to me simply because I disengage myself from its narrow clutches.

I am so valuable that even small things try to find opportunities to imprison me into its boundaries. I am so important that even trifling things want to gain importance by getting me to own them. But I’m going to be the owner myself, not the owned.

Try the following method:

– When the usual time or need for taking the drug arrives, take something ? maybe sweetmeat or something you’re fond of ? and imagine as if you were taking a substitute for the drug.
– Once you’ve successfully transferred your addiction to something else, make the taking of the substitute irregular.

Source:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781581124842&itm=4

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