Living with one of us is not pleasant at all.
Our family loves us, she thought she knew us, although now she doubts it;
our partners project onto us what they think we should be, what they thought we were when they fell in love;
and our children seem unaware of what is happening to us, but they never bring their friends home.
“When she was pregnant with me, my mother stopped using, but when she stopped giving me the breast, it came back”, María was a child when her mother went into detoxification.
She says she does not remember too much what she experienced, however, María Jesús, her mother, remembers it very well: "There comes a time when your actions are not you, I lost patience with my daughter, all I wanted was for her to go to sleep… you end up screaming four times when you go into withdrawal”.
María Jesús no longer experiences guilt as she did at the beginning of her recovery, today she is a therapist and has accompanied several hundred addicts in their process.
It was not always like this, twenty years ago all she wanted was to get out of the center: "When my mother said that she wanted to leave the detoxification center, my grandmother threatened to take away my custody," says her daughter María of her .
According to data from 2020, in Spain, 38,544 people entered treatment for illegal drug use and 20,017 for alcohol.
If we assign three relatives to each patient, we have almost 200,000 people suffering from the mental health of a loved one.
And, as I say, his suffering is no small feat.
They endure what is not written in the hope that we will return to what we were.
“You cling to the memory of what it was like, because you don't recognize the person next to you”, Marta was married to one of us.
“We went to a GP and he told us it could be depression, but it seemed like a bit of a strange depression to me because I had violent explosive episodes.”
She was a psychologist, but, like Eli, she didn't see it coming either: “His problem with drugs was in front of me, and I couldn't or didn't want to see it”, Eli explains to me what it means to live with a person with addiction and how, little Little by little, what we call codependency develops.
Although some studies seem to suggest that there is an association between codependency and less than usual activation in the prefrontal cortex, this trait is not yet described as a disorder in any textbook.
However, many of the people who have lived with someone with an addiction present some common characteristics: they are carers, they are hyper vigilant, they feel that they never do enough, they try to control, they feel guilty when they cannot help the person they love, they experience constant frustration, cover up the behavior of the other so that they are not judged, etc.
"For me, codependency is living life through others, drifting, not having that control that we think we have, trying to make everyone satisfied", Marta defines her behavior in this way, and Paqui explains it with Very similar words: “You put the world behind you, you feel the responsibility of moving the house forward, moving your partner forward, no one can notice that you are wrong because you don't even notice it.
You're so focused on getting him to work and keeping his family from noticing that you don't have time for anything else."
Paqui's partner is recovered and today she is dedicated to creating safe spaces for others who have gone through similar situations.
All of them talk about the fear they felt, but they agree on something that is surprising: the fear was, above all, what they will say.
“I was very afraid, I was afraid of what they would think of me.
I was terrified that others would judge me."
What kind of society are we building when fear of others becomes a risk factor when seeking help?
María, the daughter of María Jesús, says that this is “like asking someone with cancer, why do you have cancer?
Well, because she has touched him, period”.
Although for that simple statement, you get infinite insults on social networks —you asked for it! Not having started consuming! Those of you who use drugs should pay more taxes! You spend a lot of money on healthcare! — It would be an interesting exercise in humility if you would stop here for a moment as you read, close your eyes, and try to remember the moment when you started drinking.
They got it?
Can you remember if any of your friends were unable to stop?
Why do you think he couldn't and you can?
He Was he a vicious?
“My father and my mother used to drink together, but my father stopped when he decided and my mother couldn't stop without help”, María continues to hit the mark as we speak.
It is not a question of wanting but of power.
And, when the addiction is already installed, help is usually needed to be able to.
“They told me that I had to close the doors, make 'tough love'.
We had a very bad time but her father, his sister and I were close together ”, the one she is talking about now is Esther, the mother of a boy dependent on a video game.
The truth is that I know for a while about 'tough love': “Either you get treatment or you stay on the street, you no longer have money in the bank”.
This voice is my mother's, that's what she sounded like fifteen years ago when she put me in detox after a relapse.
There is a lot of controversy around whether or not 'tough love' is effective, but the truth is that in many of the cases I know of, including mine, it was the starting point.
There is no two ways about it: most of us addicts are scared to death at the idea of staying on the street.
The drug, when you can no longer do without it, does not make you brave but profoundly stupid and miserable.
Paqui, for example, always asked her partner what was wrong with him. If they had a house, work, and a healthy family, why did he seem depressed?
He replied that he was not happy and Paqui, since he couldn't be any other way, ended up thinking that she was the one who wasn't up to her.
She always blames her, the addict's fault and the one who accompanies us.
Relationships become perverse, there is a lot of love, but also too much fear and resentment.
They say that a person who establishes a relationship with an addict is because they are not well either and I think this makes sense: how are they able to fall in love with us?
Our motivation is always consumption.
Most of the time families move away.
Not only from the addict, the members themselves distance themselves from each other.
Some choose to justify our behavior and thus avoid facing the problem, others are questioned for putting their cards on the table, there are also those who face the problem and seek strategies to communicate with us, as Esther did: "My son was like a miura, it was impossible to talk to him, so I started to communicate via WhatsApp, even though he lived at home”.
There are no recipes or shortcuts to approaching life with a using addict, but there are places and people to turn to for help.
That is the first step, they told me.
Overcome the taboo, talk about it and ask for help.
And it looks like the evidence is on our side.
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