If a loved one is in rehab for their addiction to drugs or alcohol, you likely want to know how to offer them your support. While the decision to get and stay clean is up to the individual who needs help, it’s important for them to have a strong support system. Family and friends play an important role in helping addicts recover from their addiction, making it vital to know how to help a loved one in rehab. We’ve put together a list of several effective ways to offer your support to a loved one in treatment.
How to Support a Loved One in Rehab: Promote a Substance-Free Lifestyle
Helping a loved one in recovery treatment begins with providing a safe environment for them to return to. This starts with creating a drug-and-alcohol-free home environment that supports their new sober life. Even a single bottle of beer left out can be a trigger to someone in early sobriety. In order to stay clean, addicts need complete abstinence — especially in the beginning of their recovery journey, when they are most vulnerable to relapse.
- Do a clean sweep of their home or room, to get rid of any leftover drugs or alcohol. This also helps ensure that any potential hidden stashes are found and removed.
- Plan sober activities with them, such as outdoor dining, attending a concert or performance, or even just having a game night at home.
- Encourage exercise by going to the gym, a walk or bike ride.
Encourage Them to Follow All Treatment Recommendations
When your loved one completes outpatient rehab in Denver, they will be given an aftercare plan that offers recommendations for medications, individual or group therapy, family therapy, 12-step groups, and more.
Motivate your loved ones to stay on track with their aftercare plan. Make sure they’re attending their 12-step meetings and going to therapy. It can be helpful to offer to do things like driving the person to and from their meetings and appointments. This helps to ensure that they fulfill all recommended treatment recommendations — and don’t have an excuse to skip a session.
Help Them Build Good Coping Skills
Many people new to recovery lack strong coping skills. Perhaps they didn’t have them to begin with, or maybe drugs and alcohol were a crutch they used. A big part of how to help a loved one in rehab involves helping them develop healthy coping skills. Here are some of the ways you can help an addict deal with stressful situations:
- Be there to talk, listen and process stressful situations
- Help solve practical problems related to stress
- Work on time-management and problem-solving skills
- Establish and maintain healthy boundaries
- Participate in family therapy
- Create routines and to-do lists
How to Support a Loved One in Rehab: Offer a Helping Hand
Whether your loved one chooses an inpatient or outpatient rehab, they’ll likely need support to help juggle their daily responsibilities. Offer to help with chores that need to be done in order to make their treatment more attainable and feasible.
Ask the person if they need help with things like childcare, pet sitting, housekeeping, transportation, or grocery shopping. Ask other loved ones to offer their own services in order to lighten the load for the person in treatment.
Reduce Family Friction
High levels of conflict in family relationships are hard on everyone. While it’s not possible to erase hard feelings, you can work toward reducing family friction. This may mean putting aside your differences for the time being, or attending family therapy as a unit.
Spending time together can also help strengthen family bonds. It’s possible that you need time to reconnect as a family. By developing good communication skills, being flexible, and letting others know that you care, you can build a more positive home environment that your loved one can thrive in.
Knowing the Signs of Relapse Helps Your Loved One
Relapse doesn’t happen in just one single moment; it’s a process. Monitoring your loved one for signs of relapse allows you to step in and offer help before it’s too late. The three stages that a person goes through when they relapse are:
- Emotional relapse: This is the stage when people experience negative emotions and start acting in self-destructive ways.
- Mental relapse: In this stage of relapse, people start thinking about using drugs and alcohol. They may glamorize substance use and think about relapsing.
- Physical relapse: The last stage is when the person actually returns to substance abuse. It doesn’t take long to get to physical relapse after the mental phase.
Learn More About Addiction
Getting an addiction education is another effective method for how to help a loved one in. Even if you think you know a lot about addiction, you can always learn more. Addiction is a complex and life-long disorder, and is a multifaceted disease that impacts people in different ways. By understanding this disease, its signs and symptoms, its recovery process, you can develop a better understanding and more realistic expectations for their recovery process.
How to Support a Loved One in Rehab: Be Available
Keep in contact with your loved one on a regular basis. This shows them that you care about their recovery and are there for them when they need it. It also allows you to be aware of any changes that may indicate a relapse.
Don’t try to be the sole source of support — especially if it comes at the expense of your own emotional and physical well-being. Enlist help from others to check in with your loved one so they know they have people to count on when they feel vulnerable or just need someone to listen to them.
Rehab Treatment in Denver
If someone you love needs rehab treatment for their addiction to drugs or alcohol, they may feel like they don’t have the strength to fight it alone. We provide quality outpatient care that gives anyone suffering from addiction a complete support system to help them embrace recovery and stay sober.
We also provide family education and therapy designed to teach how to help a loved one in rehab fulfill their potential and get healthy. Contact Continuum Recovery Center of Colorado today to learn more about our outpatient programs. Call 833-997-2060 for more info.
