Patience, Non Judgmental and Rules
If you are not into using drugs and want to stay friends with a cocaine addict to help him get into drug rehab, you will need to be patient, non judgmental and might need to put some rules in place. You will need to establish “boundaries” where your friendship is concerned.
Firstly, you must not allow his drug use to cause harm to you.
Secondly, although your friend is an addict, ultimately he is responsible for the choices that he makes.
Your Task as a Friend
Your task as a friend is to enable the cocaine addicted person to realize his potential to give up cocaine use completely and live a drug-free life. Your friend became attracted to cocaine use because it appeared to resolve some problem. If your friend is still using cocaine it is because it is to some extent providing a solution and he knows of no better way.
Cocaine Is a Solution for Most Addicts
However, if you start talking to your friend, recommending this, that or the other, like they were miracle cures, very likely your advices will be taken in, like water off a duck’s back. Drug use in most users’ mind is a completely rational response to situations in their life that they find confronting and too hard to deal with. Life is hard without drug use, finding cocaine was fortunate in the addict’s mind – it fills a painful emotional place. No one uses drugs by mistake, people use drugs by intention, drugs serve the purpose of providing satisfaction, in a disappointing world.
Trying to drive a gap between the cocaine user and his addiction by rational argument about the danger they are in, might be absorbed at a cognitive level, but it won’t be at all persuasive, next time the cocaine addict feels an urge to be using cocaine.
Help and Listen to Enable Recovery
Let the addict know that you are willing to help, listen to his problems, be there to talk things through. However, in different ways, boundaries need to be set – you are there to hopefully enable recovery – not to enable further drug use.
House Rules
If the cocaine addict is living in your house you will need to make some iron rules that the addict must not break, for any excuse or reason. House rules might include upfront payment of rent money and financial contributions, no stealing or using other people’s property, no drug use or dealing in the home or in the local streets. Making rules offers trust, but rules must be enforced. Any offence, after the rules are imposed means that your friend can still make contact with you, but he must leave your home.
Further rules, or boundaries, will help to define your relationship – on your part there must be no lending of money (you know it is for drug use), no paying of drug debts – basically, no rescuing your friend from the consequences of his behavior.
Be Informed
In order to help your friend better, it pays to be informed – about cocaine addiction symptoms, and signs, about the risks of cocaine withdrawal.
Talking with an addict who is in need of your help is not like a normal conversation – the space is there for the addict to speak out about the problems on his mind – you are more of a sounding board, and should not put too much in the way of letting the addict do the talking – what the addict needs most is not good ideas – but empathetic listening. You can of course offer an opinion or two – provided the intention is to help the addict come to a better decision.
The Addict Must Realize that he Has an addiction
An addict might have some insight about his problem that will be a catalyst for change. This could be as simple as a realization that he has an addiction or he is no longer in “control”. Or he might come to realize that he is using cocaine to deal with bad feelings that he has.
As soon as an addict comes to see that he is not the master of his destiny – that he is a victim to a compulsion – that is likely a moment when he will seek and want release from the grip that cocaine has over him. Drug use only appeals when it supports feelings of mastery and power – cocaine addicts who feel that cocaine has the upper hand, are ripe to be encouraged to quit their habit, and find some new purpose and meaning in their life.
Regaining Power Over Cocaine
Therefore anything you can say to a cocaine addict that demonstrates cocaine use is disempowering, limiting of freedom, helps towards a moment when the addict wants to re-assert himself – and regain power over cocaine.
That is the moment when you can really help your friend. Let him know about a powerful drug treatment option that can beat cocaine addiction: the Narconon drug addiction recovery program. This program has been used worldwide for over 40 years to enables full recovery from substance abuse and addiction.
The best way to beat cocaine addiction is using Narconon method – drug-free, natural, and safe for people of all ages and stages of drug use.
For find out more how Narconon Cocaine Treatment Centers could help your friend, please call 1-877-782-7409.
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