Addictions are a form of slow suicide in my view Kate and that leaves parents with overwhelming feelings of guilt. That needs to stop. I think this is the hardest thing to deal with and I believe that this is how it should be treated when it comes to counselling. Putting addiction aside for a minute, every drink, every hit of a class A drug is no different to playing Russian roulette and my experience is that they don’t care if it kills them, which is pretty much suicidal ideation. So instead of treating the addiction first, maybe it’s time that the addiction was parked and the addict is treated for the very clear MH aspect of dependency.
For instance only an overdose of heroin will kill you so it would be better to treat the cause of the addiction rather than the addiction first. Maintaining a level of withdrawal so that the addict isn’t having to concentrate on several things at once. Treat the cause first not the symptom.
In prison addicts are prescribed the synthetic version of the drugs they have been taking whilst they first deal with what caused them to take them, once there are ‘breakthroughs’ on the trauma led addiction they are slowly weaned off the drugs. The success rate is significantly higher than ‘do it all in one go’ that is the norm outside.
I am not advocating drug or alcohol abuse, I just think, having seen so much addiction, that the ask to go cold turkey and absorb all the emotions that are no longer numbed in one hit is too much in one go.
I am not a professional I have experience is all and something needs to change because so far nothing really works within the community. The success rate has remained stagnant for decades with the current support networks. ????♀️