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Key points
- One may agree to give money to a person with an addiction thinking it is the compassionate choice.
- Giving money to someone with an addiction enables their self-destructive impulse.
- Everyone remains responsible for the role they play, albeit unwittingly, in someone else's self-destruction.
When a loved one who has an addiction asks us for money, we often respond to the plea and give. And we thereby enable addiction. We likely know, deep down, that we shouldn’t do this, but we do it anyway. Why?
They seem in need of help, including financial help, and we love them. And it is true that part of the money might be spent on what they actually need—food, clothing, or medicine. But only part. Another part of the money would be spent on the substance unless we attach very strong strings or agree to give only on the condition they would get help. Why do we give without conditions?
There are several reasons that are important to understand. One is that doing anything else would require engaging in a painful conversation with an uncertain outcome. Loved ones with an addiction may be manipulative. They may try to persuade us that they are not addicted, and that the substance is a remedy for prior problems such as unhealed trauma; that if only this or that happened—their spouse returned, their parents expressed pride in them, and so on—they would stop; that they already are on the way to stopping, in fact, thanks to our own prior support, but would revert or worse if we leave them now. And if we insist on deadlines, they may say this type of pressure only makes things worse. It’s an argument we can’t win.
Helping may also seem to be the compassionate thing to do given that everyone else has abandoned them. People with addictions may have been fired from their jobs, and their spouses may have divorced them. Most of their friends probably don’t want to talk to them, and social support is wearing thin. Loneliness and sadness often reach a peak in serious cases of addiction. In Jean Rhys’s novel Good Morning, Midnight, a woman addicted to drinking, Sasha, is walking down the street when a stranger asks her why she is so sad. She thinks to herself:
Yes, I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and that one broken, sad as a woman who is growing old. Sad, sad, sad… (p. 45)
We see that the addicted person is very sad and that the substance is experienced by them as their only friend. We fear they would see us as the enemy if we stood between them and the only balm for their psychic wounds they have left. We may alternate between hoping that the other would have a change of heart, coming to see alcohol or drugs as the source of the problem, and resigning ourselves to the inevitable. We think perhaps that the other is, after all, an adult. We are not responsible for his or her actions.
This is true. But we remain responsible for our actions, and for the role we may play, however unwittingly, in loved ones’ self-destruction.
The person and the shell
What I wish to suggest here is that there is a way of thinking about all this that may make it easier for us to stand firm when a loved one has an addiction. We should begin by asking whom exactly it is that we are supporting in giving money to a person with an addiction?
An addicted person is a bit like someone with dissociative identity disorder of a very particular kind: There is one evil alter, and that alter dominates most of the time. The better angels have lost control of the body, and a destructive force reigns. When we offer support, we empower the alter to destroy the body even faster. It is a bit like giving money to an evil dictator who would use it not on feeding the starving but on killing people who look askance at him.
In giving money, we may also enable self-deception by sending the signal that things are not so bad after all; that the behavior is still within acceptable boundaries and perhaps, that we believe the person isn’t really addicted.
It is important to note, however, that even when the self-destructive impulse dominates, and it seems that we cannot get through to the person, our loved one is still there somewhere, inside the shell, behind the wall, and may be able to hear us. For people with addictions often have insight into their own double-life. Thus, Sasha from Good Morning, Midnight, looking at her reflection in the mirror, says, “It isn’t my face, this tortured, and tormented mask,” (p. 43). And the alcoholic protagonist of Augusten Burrough’s Dry: A Memoir says: “Like cubic zirconia, I only look real. I’m an imposter. The fact is, I am not like other people. I am like other alcoholics,” (p. 111).
Moreover, people with addiction seem to fear sobriety and being “clean” because they fear confronting reality. But why? They only fear this because part of them already knows exactly what is happening—that they exist but do not live; that they are falling down a precipice; that they’ve given up on life.
What I wish to propose is that in such cases, we must view the manipulative pleas as the cries for help of the evil alter. Thus, we do not need to yield for reasons of either compassion or respect for autonomy. For whom would we fail to show compassion to and whose autonomy would we be disrespecting? In the manipulative exchange, we are talking not to the person we love, but to someone who doesn’t and shouldn’t have the right to speak for them. Someone, in fact, who wants to slowly kill them.
We do not need to listen. In the darkest moments, it may seem that a peaceful end for the other is the best we can hope for, but it is not. We do not have to give up on those we love just because they’ve given up on themselves.
Maintaining this position can be very difficult. In extreme cases, the loved one may threaten suicide if we withhold support. We may, thus, face a choice between standing firm and assuming that the threat is a strategy, on the one hand, and on the other — giving money they would use to purchase the means for self-destruction. Neither is a good option. Still, while the former may or may not help, it is sometimes the only thing that can help. To choose the other option is like handing a knife to a suicidal person.
Importantly, there are ways to show support by trying to build an alliance with the remnant of our loved one that we know to be in there somewhere. If they insist we are abandoning them, and that this pains them after everything they have lost, we can insist, in turn, that we are fully behind them and would support them if they want to heal. We want to offer help, but not help that hurts. What we must say sometimes may be this: “If you want to walk toward the light, I will walk with you. If you want to go toward the ravine, you must go alone.”
