Therapist's Guide to Clinical Intervention - Sigmund Freud

You must accept that:
1. Chemical dependency is an illness.
2. You did not cause it.
3. You cannot control it.
4. You cannot cure it.
Detaching from the illness and the substance-abusing individual's behaviors allows them
to take responsibility for themselves—and allows you to be free to feel the love for the
individual.
When you begin taking care of yourself and doing and being responsible for yourself, you
have the key to peace, serenity, sanity, and really feeling good about who you are.
THE ENABLER—THE COMPANION TO THE
DYSFUNCTIONALVSUBSTANCE-ABUSING PERSON
Substance abuse and substance dependency can have devastating consequences for the individual
using the substances as well as for those closely associated with them. Of most concern
is the individual who may reside with the substance-abusing individual or who spends
a significant amount of time with them. Typically, they begin to react to the symptoms of
the individual, which results in the "concerned person" unsuspectingly conspiring with the
dysfunctional behavior/illness and actually enabling it to progress and get worse. This
"enabling" behavior surrounds and feeds the dependency.
How does the dysfunctional behaviors/illness affect the dependent individual? For the
substance-dependent individual they completely lose their ability to predict accurately when
they will start and stop their substance use. Because of this they become engaged repeatedly
and unexpectedly in such behaviors as:
1. Breaking commitments that they intended to keep.
2. Spending more money than they planned.
3. Driving under the influence (DUI) violations.
4. Making inappropriate statements to friends, family, and co-workers.
5. Engaging in arguing, fighting, and other antisocial behaviors.
6. Using more of the substance(s) than they had planned.
These types of behaviors violate their internal value system resulting in feelings of guilt,
remorse, and self-loathing. However, these feelings get blocked by rationalizations and projections.
The rationalization is that "last night wasn't that bad." The projection causes the
individual to believe that "anyone would be doing what I am doing if they had to put up
with what I do." The effects of such use of defenses is to progressively lead the individual
to be out of touch with reality. This distortion becomes so solid that the individual using
substances or engaging in other dysfunctional behaviors is the last to recognize that their
behavior represents any type of personal problem.
What is an enabler? It is the person who reacts to the above symptom of illness/dysfunctional
behavior in such a way as to shield and protect them from experiencing the consequences
of their problem. Thus, they lose the opportunity to gain insight regarding the severity of
The Enabler—The Companion to the Dysjunctional/Substance-Abusing Person 383