How to Support a Friend through Rehab
Watching a friend fight against the painful hold of addiction is never an easy thing. When a person whom you’ve grown close to and consider to be important to you is losing themselves in substance abuse, it’s painful for everyone involved. For this reason, it’s so important to encourage a friend who struggles with addiction to get professional help. Getting them to this point may be stressful and difficult, but there are also challenges that come after they choose to get help. Here are some tips about how to support a friend through rehab.
Encourage Their Step Forward
First of all, always encourage them for having the courage to actually get help. It’s not easy for a person to admit that they have a problem that they are powerless to fight against, but that’s exactly the position that addiction puts people in. Let your friend know how much it means to you that they actually made meaningful steps to get better, so that they can heal their personal relationships and reclaim their lives. Even if there is some potential embarrassment that they experience in these conversations, it will mean a lot to them to hear how much you care.
Be There to Talk
It’s important to remember that you can’t do everything for this person. Even if you helped them get to the point where they accepted going to rehab, this is a journey that they must work through and choose to take on their own accord. What you can do, though, is always be there to talk with them. When undergoing addiction recovery, there are plenty of conflicting thoughts that need to be worked through, and having a friend to talk with and sort through those emotions is a tool that cannot be undervalued.
Indeed, you don’t even necessarily have to talk about rehab or anything so “big”. Sometimes, simply being there to talk about little things, like a book you recently read or a movie your recently saw, will go a long way.
Get Help for a Friend, Today!
If you have a friend who struggle from addiction, then understand that it is important to seek treatment sooner, rather than later. Dependency for illicit substances is something that only grows, and addiction creates a self-perpetuating cycle that is difficult to break. Brick House Recovery is dedicated to helping people who suffer from addiction in Idaho reclaim their lives and work towards a meaningful recovery.
