Enroll in a family recovery program well before the addict completes treatment and returns home. This will give family members adequate time to process the information and do what is necessary to make the household ready for the recovering addict. Intensive family recovery programs are available in different blocks, everything from weekend seminars to 10-day residential programs. The best treatment centers offer comprehensive family therapy programs while your loved one is in treatment. If you live locally, they may also offer ongoing family support groups.
In an intensive family recovery program, attendees are free of the distractions of the outside world, schedules, and work and pastimes. They are able to devote the time necessary to learn about addiction and how they can help the returning addict by changing some of their own unhealthy behaviors. Following completion of the family recovery program, make it a practice to do as many of the following as possible:
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Attend 12-step meetings
Attend as many 12-step meetings as you can each week. Go with an open heart and open mind, and be ready to follow the newcomer’s suggestions – when you are comfortable doing so. These include getting a sponsor or mentor, reading available literature, and seeking your own spiritual counseling according to your preferences.
Apply 12-Step principles
Apply the principles of the 12 steps in the organization you have joined (12-step meetings for friends/family members of addicts). Recognize that the only person you can change is yourself – and that is a significant accomplishment, especially when learning how to be supportive of the recovering friend/family member who is an addict.
Recognize your own role
Think about your own role in the relationship with the recovering addict. See how your reactions can be modified to better foster healthier behaviors on your part.
No enabling
Resolve never to enable the addict to use – no matter what pleas, exhortations, or threats you may hear. Understand that the addict in recovery may be tempted to relapse – and your refusal to enable such behavior may make a profound difference. Regardless, you cannot help the recovering addict by giving into his or her pain. They must experience the pain themselves and work through it in recovery, using the techniques and strategies learned during treatment.
Ensure a clean home
This recommendation is one that every family should go through prior to the recovering addict’s return home. But it is also one that should be an ongoing practice. This is not to say that you are snooping, but you do need to ensure that there is nothing in the house that facilitates using or compromises the recovering addicts’ resolution to remain sober.
In the final analysis, family therapy benefits everyone concerned. You want the best for the recovering addict, and one way to facilitate that is to be as prepared as you can once he or she returns home and is reunited with the family. You should be prepared to take the time to go into family therapy so that you have the skills and the knowledge to know what to do and how to handle situations as they arise. You can’t presume to know how to do this yourself. That’s the purpose of family therapy.