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Wives of recovering alcoholics


Married to an Addict in Recovery? Tips for a Sober Spouse

ByNick Jones

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  • Addiction

Married to an Addict in Recovery? Tips for a Sober Spouse

Being married to someone in recovery from addiction can in unpredictable ways alter the dynamics of your relationship.

You may feel elated that your spouse is no longer using their preferred substance of abuse but may also feel bitter about the missed moments, the stress you have experienced as well as the future of your partnership.

If you decided to stay in your marriage then you’ll need to understand the recovery process. You’ll also need to understand how to support their recovery, care for yourself, and discuss the importance of making changes.

Recovery will change your marriage just like active addiction changed your relationship. It will take time to readjust, to heal, and to learn how to live together once more.

There’s a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous that not only do alcoholics have a drinking problem, but also a thinking problem. These “thinking problems” require that the newly sober person learns how to cope, live, and react differently to life. This is why recovery is a lifelong process and needs constant attention.

Want to learn how to support yourself and your spouse during this time of change? Read on to discover our tips for sober spouses married to an addict in recovery.

Tips for Being Married to an Addict in Recovery

We often view marriage as an equal partnership. But, when your spouse was struggling with their addiction, they likely weren’t equally contributing to your home life.

Explore the following tips for spouses who are married to an addict in recovery to better support yourself and their recovery process.

1. Understanding Addiction

Do your best to educate yourself about addiction.

It’s difficult to understand something we’ve never been through, but do your best to empathize with your partner’s addiction. This doesn’t mean that you condone it or allow it to continue. It just means that you can understand that they wouldn’t choose this type of lifestyle for themselves.

This can help you to reduce the amount of blame and anger you feel toward your spouse.

2. Self-Care

Taking care of yourself will give you a renewed sense of purpose and a direction in life. Many spouses who are married to an addict in recovery expect that once their spouse gets sober, there will be more time for their relationship. But, this isn’t always the case at the beginning of recovery.

Recovery needs to be your loved one’s number one priority. They need to attend meetings, learn new coping skills, and get support from other addicts and/or healthcare professionals.

When they are newly sober, it’s important for you to put yourself first just as they are putting their recovery first. Take time to exercise, be with friends and family, and pursue your hobbies. You can also join a support group yourself such as Al-Anon to learn how to cope with living with people who are in recovery.

3. “Alcohol was but a symptom”

Removing the addictive substance won’t cure your spouse of their character defects completely. You both may see their recovery as a life-altering change, but it also comes with its share of challenges.

Your spouse is learning how to cope with emotions and problems without their addictive substance. If they’ve been using for many years, their development may also have been stunted.

This is where the AA phrase, “Alcohol was but a symptom” can be most understood. The problems that led your loved one to their addiction likely still exist without their substance. This could be trauma, mental illness, or negative thinking patterns.

A twelve step program, mental health professionals, and potentially medications can help them to overcome these challenges, but it doesn’t mean that it will be a smooth ride.

Because of this, you’ll need to be patient, take care of yourself, and have firm boundaries. Remember, you are never obligated to stay in your marriage, especially, if you aren’t happy. Aim to be communicative with your partner, but realize that they need to learn how to regulate their own moods, actions, and behaviors.

4. Find Support

Finding support is especially important if you felt isolated while your spouse was in active addiction. If it felt like your life revolved around their addiction, then you’ll need to lean on like-minded people who can understand and support you.

When a loved one is addicted to a substance, some people develop a set of behaviors, thoughts, and actions known as codependency. Codependency occurs when the non-addicted person gets their needs met by caretaking for the addicted individual. Codependent partners typically enable their loved ones, make excuses for their partner’s actions, and feel like a martyr.

Support groups can help you to learn how to not engage in codependent behaviors. They can also teach you how to emotionally support yourself and become more self-reliant.

5. Set Boundaries

Setting boundaries with a person in recovery is just as important as setting boundaries with someone in active addiction. This is because of the reality that they may relapse again. It’s also important to hold your spouse accountable for their behavior in recovery.

Be patient while they re-learn how to cope normally again or even for the first time. But, don’t allow them to manipulate, lie, or treat you disrespectfully. If these behaviors seem to be a problem for your spouse in recovery, then individual and couples therapy could be beneficial.

Individual therapy is also a great environment for you to learn how to set firm boundaries and enhance your communication skills.

6. Rebuild Your Identity

When your loved one was in active addiction, it’s likely that part of your identity was based on their addiction. A lot of your life revolved around worrying about them, trying to get them to change, and taking on their responsibilities around the home.

Their addiction likely didn’t give you much time to do things you enjoyed.

Make a conscious choice to re-build your identity. Rebuilding your identity will also be useful in the event that your loved one relapses. Your new identity and life paired with your firm boundaries can help you to not take their relapse personally and to act in your own best interest.

Start by getting in touch with your old hobbies. Contact friends and family members and make a commitment to spend quality time with them.

Married to an Addict in Recovery? You’re Not Alone

If you’re married to an addict in recovery, you’re certainly not alone. Millions of families struggle with a loved one’s addiction, but many learn how to successfully adapt to the changes recovery brings. To be successful and manage these changes, it’s important to put yourself and your children first.

When those factors take precedence, then you can more confidently support your spouse throughout their recovery.

Live in Arizona and need to find an accredited treatment program? Check out our list of affordable programs that can help your loved one to get sober and help your family to heal from addiction.

Marriage After Sobriety: What to Expect

Recovery from substance use disorder can cause many changes in your marriage — not all of them positive. But with support, your marriage can survive.

It’s well-known that substance use disorder (SUD) can negatively affect relationships. But what many people don’t realize is that even after sobriety, addiction can continue to have a negative impact.

There are over 40 million people in the U.S. alone living with substance use disorder. And many of those individuals have partners or spouses.

If your partner is recovering from addiction, the process can come with challenges, and it may take time to cope with those challenges, but you’re not alone.

By setting the right expectations and considering treatment for yourself, you can overcome addiction together with your partner.

Substance use disorder doesn’t only affect the person who’s addicted to drugs and alcohol — it affects loved ones as well, especially the partner who’s living with the person experiencing addiction.

According to the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), couples in which at least one partner lives with substance use disorder are often more unhappy than other couples.

Substance use disorder can negatively affect relationships and families in many ways, including:

  • drug and alcohol use can create an increased risk of violence and abuse within the relationship
  • substance use can be the direct cause of arguments and fights
  • buying drugs and alcohol can lead to fights about money
  • the couple can become isolated from their community to hide the partner’s substance use

Substance use within unhappy relationships can also become a downward spiral that can be difficult to get out of. One (or both) partner’s substance use can become the source of arguments.

But the stress that comes along with constant arguing can become a trigger for the person living with SUD to use drugs or alcohol.

What is codependency?

The term codependency is used often and colloquially. But originally, it was created to describe the romantic partners (usually women, although we now know that men can become codependent as well) of people with SUD.

These codependent people take care of their partners that live with a condition.

The entire relationship starts revolving around this dynamic: a partner living with a condition or disorder and the caretaking partner.

The problem is that codependent relationships are toxic for a variety of reasons. The caretaking partner typically puts their partner’s needs above their own, which can lead to:

  • poor health
  • unhealthy boundaries
  • worsening mental health

The caretaking partner in codependent relationships may also assume this unhealthy role in other relationships as well.

Codependency can also cause the non-addicted partner to unwittingly enable unhealthy behaviors, which may encourage substance use and addiction.

Many people expect life to become perfect after their partner becomes sober. You may have believed your partner’s substance use to be the root of all your relationship problems — so naturally, you assume that once the substance use is removed, life can get “back to normal.”

And this is sometimes the case. Some couples can thrive immediately after the addicted partner becomes sober.

But for most couples experiencing substance use, life after sobriety isn’t so smooth. This is because of the way long-term substance use has affected both partners as well as the relationship itself.

In addition, families can be understood as a system. When one partner decides to change their behavior (quit using drugs and alcohol), it causes ripples throughout the family system. This can be disruptive, even if the change made was positive.

The partner who has a substance use disorder

Recovery from substance use disorder can be an incredibly difficult, and sometimes painful, process. People who are walking away from long-term substance use may face physical withdrawal symptoms, including:

  • tremors and shakes
  • nausea and vomiting
  • insomnia
  • diarrhea

In addition, quitting drugs and alcohol also usually comes with mental health conditions, like anxiety or anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure). The partner in recovery may experience irritability and even have angry outbursts.

These mental health symptoms can last longer than the withdrawal period, especially if the person with SUD hasn’t learned healthy coping mechanisms to deal with unwanted feelings.

Recovery can also sometimes uncover underlying mental health conditions that have contributed to substance use disorder. For example, up to half of people with substance use disorder have also experienced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

If the partner living with SUD hasn’t found healthy ways to cope with the trauma or PTSD, then it could begin to affect them in negative ways.

Because of the difficult aspects of substance use recovery, the partner in recovery may not initially have the energy to commit to healing the relationship.

The non-addict partner

The supportive partner may also go through their own emotional process. SUD takes an enormous toll on intimate relationships. It’s often very difficult for the partner to let go of the resentment, anger, and fear they’ve felt over the time their partner was using drugs and alcohol.

In a relationship affected by substance use, it’s likely that trust has been broken many times. The supportive partner may have learned to walk on eggshells in an attempt to retain peace in the relationship.

It may require an intentional and lengthy process for both partners to learn how to rebuild trust within the relationship.

It’s recommended that the supportive partner seeks their own support during the recovery process. You may consider individual therapy or a peer-led support program like Al-Anon.

The relationship

Codependency can continue to affect marriages even after your partner has become sober.

That’s because codependency is a relationship trait and condition that’s independent of the substance use itself. In other words, it continues even when the substance use has stopped.

Even if your partner stops using drugs and alcohol, if the codependency itself isn’t addressed, this dynamic will continue to affect the relationship.

Codependency keeps people from having healthy relationships, so unless this dynamic is changed, sobriety may not be enough to keep the cycle from continuing.

If the person with SUD suddenly isn’t dependent upon their partner to take care of them, this can cause a disruption in the relationship as well. The supportive partner may want to be needed, and feel unhappy, lost, or confused with the new relationship dynamic.

If your partner is in recovery from substance use disorder, it’s important that you provide support in a way that doesn’t reinforce codependent behavior. Consider the following tips.

1. Take part in the treatment

Most treatment methods for substance use disorder involve the family. That means you will likely play a role in your partner’s treatment. Be engaged in their treatment, and work on healing the relationship.

According to 2018 research, supportive relationships with family, spouses, and sponsors help those working toward sobriety sustain their recovery.

2. Learn about substance use disorder

It’s beneficial for you to learn about substance use disorder, including how it affects both your partner as well as yourself. This may help you to understand SUD and how addiction works, which can help you separate your partner and the disease.

3. Try to stop enabling behaviors

Try to become aware of enabling behaviors. For example, you may feel tempted to make excuses for your loved one when they relapse. You might tell yourself (and others), “It was just one time; it’s not that serious.”

It’s suggested that you’re careful of these behaviors, as they can lead to a codependent dynamic.

4. Seek support

Addiction affects the entire family, including you. Consider seeking mental health support for yourself. A therapist can help you learn more about the role you may have played in a codependent relationship and learn healthier patterns.

If you’d like, you may consider online therapy options or support groups to find a mental health professional that can help you during this time.

5. Have realistic expectations

Although many people recover from SUD every day, recovery is often a long and complex process. Your partner may relapse one or more times before finally achieving long-term sobriety.

Make sure your expectations for their recovery are realistic. Try not to enable their substance use behaviors, but also try to release expectations of perfection.

If you’re seeking support…

Al-Anon is a 12-step based peer support group for family members of people addicted to alcohol and drugs. You can find a local or virtual support group, and access additional resources, on their website.

If alcohol or drug use has led to an abusive or violent situation, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE or text START to 88788.

Living with someone who has substance use disorder can be difficult, and also create changes in your relationship. Although recovery is positive for the whole family, it may not be as idyllic as you hope.

It can take time to recover your marriage during the recovery process, but support is available. You’re not alone. Professional treatment can help you and your partner cope with the negative effects of substance use.

We, the wives of alcoholics, are more than anything afraid to admit that we are the wives of alcoholics

Photo: ITAR-TASS / Vladimir Smirnov

Is it possible to help a drinking person, and where are the limits of such help for a wife, relatives, friends?

Our text:

It is impossible to force someone to stop drinking. Whether to catch them over the abyss in the rye?

caused a new response.

– No, I won't hide the keys anymore. If he wants to endanger himself and others, that's his choice. I thought for too long that I could control, protect and, as you wonderfully wrote, “keep safety”.

And yes, I'm sure you did it out of love. And I am sure that even now they are filled with love - this can be seen from the text.

But it's out of love that I won't hide my car keys. And there might be an accident. And people can die. And it's scary. And I will pray that this does not happen.

But I am not the Lord God, I am not in charge of people's destinies. Nor those who will be in this accident (probably I will pray for them all my life later). Not my alcoholic.

I will no longer "lay straws" and "mitigate the consequences." I just won't get in the car with him if he's drunk. Furthermore. I will not sit at the table with him. I'll ask him not to come home drunk. I will tell him how and where to get treatment. And that's it.

Yes, he is not aware of his actions while drunk. But it is not always in the same state. And in moments of sobriety, and in a hangover, he knows perfectly well that you can’t drink while driving.

He even suspects that he is an alcoholic. Friends, relatives, colleagues must have told him about it more than once. Or maybe they told him his “adventures”, reproached him for the damage done. He KNOWS that he crossed the border a long time ago, but DENIES.

Those alcoholics who are not told this are in the worst position. Because they themselves try with all the strength of their souls to hide this thought from themselves.

And if their relatives also play along with them (“He won’t come to work today, he’s sick”, “Your blood pressure has risen, you need to be treated”, “He doesn’t drink, he’s just upset”) – that’s it! An alcoholic will never know the truth about himself. Because he is afraid of confessing to himself more than anything in the world.

Even we wives of alcoholics are more than anything afraid to admit that we are wives of alcoholics. And we are just as sick as they are. Dependence - codependence: two manifestations of the same disease.

What to say about alcoholics... They will sincerely save another alcoholic, instruct him, even pity him, never admitting to himself that they themselves are the same. "No, I'm not an alcoholic, I just drink . .. I'm tired ... I want to quit, yes, I was in a drug treatment hospital, but I'm not as heavy as these."

I completely agree with the author: it is impossible to persuade an alcoholic to be treated. He can only want it himself. But for this he must at least call himself an alcoholic.

Wonderful you wrote: “I know only one person who stopped drinking because of fear. One day I woke up, lying face down in a puddle. Literally, lying on the bottom.

Photo: Mikhail Pochuev/TASS

Right at the bottom! But this is not the key. The key phrase here is "stopped drinking." Although "quit drinking" does not always mean "recovered." But quitting drinking for an alcoholic is already a miracle.

Everyone already knows that alcoholism is a disease. Deadly, progressive.

It is impossible to resist alcohol cravings with human strength. It's hard to imagine. This can only be learned from recovering alcoholics.

They talk about it very eloquently. And in order to overcome this inhuman craving, you need to reach the bottom. Exactly to the bottom, as you wrote. Only then does a person surrender, capitulate to his illness. Only then does he give his life to God. And nothing is impossible for God.

But we, friends and relatives, do not let him reach the bottom. Of course, out of love! But if we understood that by blocking his “bottom”, we are blocking his way to salvation with our strong, exhausted, but strong back, would we save him?

That's why I won't take away the keys to the car, and if such a misfortune happened to my husband, I definitely wouldn't save him from prison.

Purely out of love. Perhaps this is its bottom. Not all alcoholics make it to the bottom. But if a person has reached his bottom, he has a chance to survive and recover.

And I wouldn't help him make amends for the relatives of the dead. I would try to help them by any means. But from myself. Without facilitating his restitution.

And yes, of course, a drunk person should be left at home by all means. But in the case of an alcoholic, it will not be a person against me - his disease. She is powerful. She is, of course, no greater than God. And the alcoholic did not choose her. And yet he has a choice: look for a way out or get sick. He chooses to be sick. And I can't change his choice.

And if we take keys and bottles away, we deprive a person of will, and choice, and decision, and fatal mistakes. We play the role of god for him. And he never wants to look at the True God.

I apologize in advance to all those whose loved ones died under the wheels of drunk drivers. This is scary. It's tough. But those who did not let him get behind the wheel are not to blame. The disease is to blame. And the alcoholic should be punished. And this is his recovery. Maybe.

"I need to take care of myself, and then there will be happiness." Life of codependent people

"I freaked out, controlled, screamed about divorce, two days later - love again, constant swings and hassle. "

"Separating him from yourself is so difficult. It seems like a concern, but it's a control."

Give up yourself, your interests and needs for the sake of another person who uses alcohol or drugs... At first glance, such a decision may seem strange, but this is how many families live in which there is a dependent person. We discuss with experts why this happens and what to do about it.

"How can they even smile when this happens in their family?"

Natalia is 35 years old, her father died of alcoholism, and in 2009 she married a drug addict. "If they turned off the light in a room where there are 100 people, and they let me in and said:" Choose someone, "I would definitely choose an addict." When they talked, met, she did not know that Mikhail was using. Together, the couple could drink, take a walk, alcohol was not a problem. The future husband told her that "sometimes he eats all sorts of bad things and you need to fight this. " This did not stop the girl and did not frighten her, she rather did not attach any importance to these words.

Why do we choose a dependent person as our partner? Doctor of Psychology Natalya Zentsova explains that it is often associated with psychological trauma in early childhood. When a woman chooses such a man for herself, albeit unconsciously, she harbors the illusion that she will be needed in this relationship.

"I'll help him, I'll always be there, I'll wear pills, I'll give him a compress, we'll get through it all together, we'll go to rehabilitation together. In this way, she gets what she didn't get in the family: respect, love, admiration, for example, from dad that she is beautiful, smart and his beloved daughter, she begins to somehow feed her own self-esteem in alliance with an alcoholic or drug addict.

On an unconscious level, such people choose a partner in order to earn his love. "But love is an absolute truth, and you can be loved simply for being a person, and not for what you do. "

At some point, all the gold, phone and camera disappeared from Natalia's house. "Everything of value went to the pawnshop. At that moment, I was covered and the realization came that something was wrong if a person could do such things." The mother-in-law explained to the girl that her son was sick and needed to be treated, but she did not take it seriously, and even thought that she simply did not like that Natalya was living with them.

By that time, Misha's mother had been attending meetings for codependent relatives of alcoholics and drug addicts for two years, bringing home her 12-step assignments. Natalya said: "I'm not sick, I don't need it," but still "she looked and asked with one eye."

About the 12 Step Program

The 12 Step Program is one of the recovery programs. It was created in the 1930s in the USA, and it quickly began to be used in many other countries of the world. The bottom line is to recognize that a person alone cannot cope with addiction, and therefore he needs the help of a group of people who are faced with the same problem. The program includes twelve steps that a group member must take to overcome the problem and return to a sober lifestyle.

The girl first came to the group in 2010. “There are a lot of women sitting there, a few men, they are all happy, satisfied, well-groomed, they come there by car. They have jobs, money to help their loved ones recover. I looked and thought, how can they even smile when in their does this happen to the family?

© Aleksey Durasov/TASS

After some time, Natalya decided to divorce her husband. She went to her parents, Mikhail agreed, he no longer believed that something could work out.

"I filed for divorce, my mother-in-law called me and said: wait at least a year, don't get divorced. Thanks to her, our family is still alive and well."

Mikhail went to his first rehabilitation. He explained that he did not know how to live differently. Now he says: "If I use, I will die, there are no other options."

Like many others, Natalia began to work with her codependency not for herself, but for her husband to begin to recover. Shouts and control were replaced by calmness and conversation. "I make all important decisions only after I think. I really like this new "I'll think", and not like before "come on, come on", and then rake up everything that I have done. And only after a while, going to groups , reading literature, I came to understand that I need to take care of myself and then there will be happiness. It seems to me that everyone went through this. I am now where I should be. I continue to learn to love my husband, and I like it. "

Dr. Natalya Zentsova is sure that there is only one way to fight codependency - self-education. You will have to learn what addiction is, its basics, in order to stop blaming yourself and help "really recover, and not maintain the dependence of the user."

"He's different, he's a man, he's not yours"

Yulia's son went through rehabilitation nine years ago. He stays sober, works, has a full and healthy life. During the treatment of her son, the woman was advised to go to groups for co-dependents. “It was a shock for me. I started to learn in groups that codependence is a disease and you can fight it, that I am like that too and I need to take care of myself.”

The most important thing Yulia learned there was how to deal with an addict, how to begin to understand him, how to talk to him and how to trust him.

Groups helped to unfreeze feelings. This is the main thing to understand how you react to this or that event, to explain to yourself what is happening to you at the moment when you are talking to him on the phone, when he asks you for something. They taught him not to be able to manipulate you

A parent's codependence usually consists in the fact that mom and dad feel responsible for their child and ask themselves such painful questions: where did we miss him, what is our mistake? But the truth is that by looking for someone to blame, you can hardly help a loved one. Natalya Zentsova says that in therapy they love the term "tough love".

"That's the only thing that can help an addict take a step towards recovery. Tough love says, 'That's it. Enough. We refuse to pull you out of the problems you create for yourself. We love you very much and therefore we say to you: if you want to suffer, suffer, if you don’t want to, look for the path of salvation. We are ready to help you with the selection of a clinic, pay for treatment, support along this path, but we cannot support you on the path of use. "And when the family finds the strength and patience to realize this tough love, everyone begins to be responsible for their actions."

© Aleksey Durasov/TASS

Despite the fact that WHO recognized alcoholism as a disease back in 1952, there is a popular opinion in society that it is promiscuity, laziness, lack of willpower. “The first thing to do is to believe that this is a disease,” Yulia says. “Mothers do not believe that this is a fatal disease, that it can be in remission for a long time and then reappear, this must also be kept in mind. Even if there is a breakdown, the addict who went through rehab and the mothers who went to groups, they know where to turn."

The addict's mother dissolves in him, she is all in his problems, worries, but you have to understand that he is he, and you are you. “Nine years have passed for me, I still catch myself thinking that somewhere subconsciously I am still connected with him. You need to understand that he is different, he is a person, he is not yours. We bind them to ourselves with dislike so strongly that he cannot escape from these embraces.

Julia remembers how her son returned from the center and how much he has changed. “They come from there different, completely different, but we remain the same, you understand? we stay in the same place, and when they return home, they fall into the same place, and breakdowns come from there, and if mom starts pulling herself out of this, then, of course, everything is different. greatly helps the addict to overcome the disease. "

"This is my dad, and he can still do it like this"

Alexandra is 20 years old, and all her adult life she took care of her father, who was ill with alcoholism. “When I was little, he didn’t take my mother and me from the hospital, because he got drunk with happiness. I loved my dad so much that I went to all the booze with him, my grandmother came to pick me up, and I wanted to be there, sit next to me” .

After her parents divorced, Sasha didn't see her dad for a year, and at the age of eight she found him on social networks, they started talking. Her father took her to his place for the summer, their communication continued further, but dad did not stop drinking. “At some point, I realized that I couldn’t put up with it anymore. We walk down the street, he staggers, falls, I’m very scared, but I can’t leave him anywhere, because he is my dad.”

A child's unconditional love for a parent who does not actually act like a responsible adult leads to self-esteem problems in children. Natalya Zentsova notes: “In childhood, we believe that parents are absolute truth, gods, above which and better than whom there is no one. When in childhood a child understands that mom and dad are absolutely not true and, roughly speaking, they are not super good, but there may even be bad ones, this fact involuntarily leaves an imprint on his psyche, and the child feels flawed and deprived of many things that are ordinary for his friends and classmates.

© Aleksey Durasov/TASS

This continued until the girl's eighteenth birthday. She decided to cut off contact with dad, stopped answering calls until his friends informed him that the condition was already very serious and dad could not be pulled out of there. “On New Year’s Eve, dad left for six months for rehabilitation in the Crimea. It was scary how it would be next, I missed him very much, he called every weekend, said that he was tired, he wanted to go home, he wouldn’t drink anymore, he would start a new life. I knew I couldn't take him out of there. "

When Alexandra's father returned home, he had a breakdown, and the girl had tantrums, attempts to cut off contact, accusations of betrayal. “It took me another month to start contacting him. Now we have found some other connection, not just formal dad and daughter, but something more, we are so close and dear people, there is no one closer.”

Today Sasha's dad is sober, he has a job, started a relationship with a woman, he is developing his hobby - making lamps out of wood. "I calm down a bit and see that my dad is not just some drunk who sleeps under the fence, as everyone says, but this is my dad and he can still do this."

What to do if your loved one is addicted and you need help

First, you should contact specialists. Self-treatment, reading books that are advised by bloggers, artists, may not give the desired effect and even aggravate the situation. "We are translating and interpreting the content of the book from the point of view of the thinking that we have at this moment. We cannot be objective, how codependent we are or not. In any case, I am in favor of asking for help or to a person who has gone through this path, or to one that will observe your recovery dynamics," says Alina Guselnikova, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the National Anti-Drug Union.

According to her, there are several effective ways to help yourself: