F*ck Feelings (16 page)

Here's how you can do it:

• Find out what can be done to help and do your proper share

• If behavior change is necessary, be objective about whether it's possible

• Urge treatment only if you think it has something to offer

• Stop treatments that haven't proven useful

• Encourage suffering people to do what matters in life, to the extent that symptoms will allow

• Coach people on methods for fighting negative thinking, using the above values

Here's what to tell someone/yourself when you're seized by urges to help the unhappy.

Dear [Me/Family Member/Poor, Miserable Sonofabitch],

I can't watch someone I care about [suffering/weeping/flunking out/drown in hurt] without feeling there's always something that can help and I should be able to find by [trying harder/visiting Lourdes/finding money for a psychoanalysis], but I know that's not true. I will try to ease your suffering, if possible, by [being a friend/wearing a rainbow Afro wig/farting repeatedly], but if my efforts don't work, I will not judge you or me as failures. I will respect you for continuing to [shower/take out the garbage/face another day].

Dumb Things We Say to Try to “Cheer Up” the Depressed, and Their More Helpful Alternatives

We all want what's best for those we love, which is why our first instinct when we see signs of alcoholism or drug addiction is to express worry, argue about whether or not a problem exists, and push for treatment. Rehab is not just, as the interventionists call it, “a gift” but
the
gift; it's the Tickle Me Elmo on every addict's Christmas list.

If we argue too much, or if the addict tends to behave badly while under the influence, we get angry and then feel guilty about that. Everyone can agree that the one thing that can cure both her addiction and our discomfort is the aforementioned treatment, which, like that ointment for the rash you got from a regrettable sexual encounter, will clear everything up right quick.

Unfortunately, however, given the way people usually react to other people's advice, and the fact that treatment often doesn't work, especially when agreed to only to placate others, urging addicts into treatment often backfires.

For one thing, intense urgings usually wind up making the addict (and nonaddicts) feel the problem isn't addiction, it's your feelings, and her goal isn't to evaluate or improve herself, but to make you happy or change your mind. She feels responsible for your feelings, you feel responsible for her rescue, and her responsibility for her own well-being and self-control gets lost in between.

If she agrees to get treatment in order to make you happy, not only is treatment less likely to help but blame for failure of said treatment is more likely to land on your doorstep, leaving you angrier and more helpless than before. In other words, you can start a dangerous
vicious cycle by intervening the addict into treatment that often promotes more conflict and drug use than sobriety.

Fortunately, however, there is a better way to discuss sobriety with an addict (or to determine whether someone's drug use is dangerous) than by creating an emotional, or any other, mandate for treatment. It begins with accepting your inability to rescue someone from addiction, an acceptance that is as hard as an addict's accepting his or her inability to control addiction.

It requires you to keep intense feelings, including fear and anger, to yourself. It allows you to be potentially helpful with less risk of doing harm or being harmed. So if you're called on by love or bad luck to rescue an addict, slap yourself and get help right away.

Enroll in Al-Anon or get a good counselor to coach you on how to manage your rescue instincts. Yes, there are probably some good, helpful things you can do, but not until you've learned how to protect yourself from being drained, over- or underdiagnosing addiction, and inadvertently encouraging addictive behavior. Then you can put aside accusations and fears and instead use the dispassionate language of business to describe the problems that need to be improved and what will happen if they aren't.

Control your urge to help and you'll be better able to help someone control their urge to use and give them a truly useful gift: the power to help themselves.

Among the wishes would-be rescuers express are:

• To fill whatever need causes the addict's addiction, but in a healthy way

• To help the addict understand feelings that cause addiction, and thus improve control

• To get the addict effective treatment

• To get the addict to see the need for treatment

• To figure out where everyone went wrong

Here are three examples:

My boyfriend is a great guy and would do anything for me, but I can't get him to stop drinking. I know he had a miserable childhood, and I respect the way he basically raised himself, but he gets tipsy every night to get to sleep, has a glass in his hand after 3 p.m. on weekends, and doesn't realize how angry and scary he can sometimes get when he's had one too many. He's never hurt me, and he never misses work—as he points out to me over and over again whenever I bring up the issue—but I see trouble ahead. I don't think he's ever had a serious relationship before, and I have confidence he'll listen to me if I can get him to see it's important and I love him. My goal is to help him get into treatment.

My brother was always my best friend, but he's been different since he got back from Iraq. He was discharged for using drugs and alcohol, which made him bitter because he's got PTSD (and was probably self-medicating in the first place). Since then he's been in and out of rehab, but it's always a revolving door and he never really gets the help he needs. I'd do anything to see him get better, so I'd like to spend my savings on getting him into a private thirty-day program and then maybe have him come to live with me and my husband, who, as you might imagine, is not crazy about the idea, particularly since my brother stole from us the last time he was here. My goal is to help the big brother who always helped me, no matter what it takes.

My wife nags me to stop drinking, and I know I like to have a couple glasses of wine with dinner, but I'm confident that I never go over my limit and there hasn't been a time in the last ten years when I had a hangover or put myself over the limit when I had to drive. She's pretty sensitive about drinking because she grew up with alcoholic parents, and I don't like to make her unhappy, but I work hard, I love good wine at the end of the day, and it's not something I want to give up just to make her happy. My goal is to get her to see that I'm not an alcoholic so she can feel better and I can keep enjoying the finer things.

Using love or any strong emotion to push an addict toward rehab usually causes nothing but false promises and/or a nasty argument (e.g., quoth Amy Winehouse, “No! No! No!”), so when it comes to trying to help an addict, it's best to manage your emotions carefully.

Trying to nurture a tortured, misunderstood, drunk Shrek who loves you into a confident prince is appealing as a fairy tale but dangerous as an actual game plan. Of the many things that cannot cure addiction, love is one of them, even if it's unconditional and mutual. Believing otherwise and banking on Beauty's curative love actually prevents Beasts from realizing
they
need to learn to manage themselves.

Sheltering a needy drunk when no other place will is another sweet gesture that backfires. Addicts don't deserve the horrible dangers they encounter, but if you don't make shelter conditional on sobriety or ensure your safety in some other way, they won't get better and you (and your marriage, health, and credit score) will suffer even more than they will.

Rescue makes addiction worse until you gain control of your own addiction to being a rescuer, and spell out what's acceptable and safe. Borrow a page from the
Intervention
playbook by figuring out what will oblige you to leave, evict, or divorce an addict if they don't give recovery a try. Spell out addiction-related behaviors that must stop, whether it's stealing, nodding off, neglecting your kids, and all the other shades of the fuckuppery rainbow. Decide what you need to do with your feet, wallet, and brand-new alarm codes, then let the
addict know where you stand, with regret, and be prepared to follow through.

Don't skimp on your love, but know what needs to be done to protect it from addiction, including yours to helping. Let your caring motivate sobriety, not stimulate emotional reactivity.

If addiction is just a possibility, and not a well-established disaster, don't overdiagnose or overreact. Instead of asking a beloved suspect to get sober because you care and you're worried, ask him to figure out his own standards for defining problematic drug use and apply it to himself. Avoid debate over how often he has to experience cravings, hangovers, or withdrawal to be in trouble. Instead, ask him whether drug use has interfered at work or caused him to do things he regrets. If he's unsure, ask him to try a few months of sobriety, just to compare.

Educate yourself about treatment and AA. If you think it might help, invest in a big intervention, but keep in mind that, like bar mitzvahs and magic shows, interventions are only for the young, impressionable, and green, at least in terms of usefulness. Even then, treatment's power is limited and depends a great deal on an individual's motivation, so don't assume that more is better.

If treatment fails, urge him to keep thinking about his own reasons for getting sober—not to make you happy, but because he wants to keep living with you—and to use whatever he's found helpful. Even so, don't regard relapse as failure; every day of trying to stay sober, as long as one is trying one's hardest, is a success.

If you can't get an addict help, respect the strength it takes to continue to love someone who is always in trouble, always requires careful management, and may or may not get sober, recover, and grow. If you can control your urge to save an addict while not giving up, however, you may help people recover from addiction and possibly get a yes, yes, yes.

Here's what you wish for and can't have:

• An ability to get through to someone about addiction, with or without professional assistance

• Faith in treatment

• Progress through spontaneous sharing of feelings

• Freedom from fear of relapse

• Freedom from addiction worst-case scenarios

Here's what you can aim for and actually achieve:

• Accept addictive behavior as possibly unavoidable and uncontrollable

• Limit responsibility and blame

• Manage anger and false hope

• Do your best to help addiction without taking responsibility for rescue

• Know when you have to go and know that you've done your best

Here's how you can do it:

• Discuss tools for thinking rationally about addiction

• Define what has to change for both you and the addict to live under the same roof or under current conditions

• Offer input about ongoing addiction-related behaviors and stand by what you think about their dangerousness or other potential for harm without expressing negative emotion

• Urge an addicted person to check out potential sources of therapy, guaranteeing that a patient search will be rewarded but that he or she may first find many duds

• Rescue yourself if you can, knowing that you can't rescue anyone else

Here's what to tell someone/yourself when you're tempted to rescue him from addiction.

Dear [Self/Beloved Drunk or Junkie/Person I Once Trusted Who Pawned My TV to Buy Pills],

I would have given my [life/TV/fortune] to save you, but that approach seems likely to cost me my [life/TV/fortune] and make me [pissed/broken/broke/very obsessed with the one relationship in my life that makes me most unhappy and which I can do nothing about]. So instead I will [check your health insurance/put aside money/change the locks] and let you know that living with me requires [sobriety/doing your share/no unreasonable shit]. Of course, various treatments may help you get there, but that's up to you. Good luck.