How to Encourage Someone to Go to Rehab?

Answer 1

Watching somebody’s life fall apart due to drugs or alcohol is a sickening thing to do. You may have never tried to help anybody with this kind of problem, or you may be somebody that has tried everything to encourage an addict but nothing has worked. Sadly, drug and alcohol addiction is something that will be very hard for the addict to give up without the proper help and care. Becoming offended that the addict seems to not care is pointless because the addiction is a mental illness. You must take certain measures to wake the addict up and let them know that you mean business about getting them better and off drugs or alcohol.

You’re first step is let the addict know how this is affecting them as well as you. This probably won’t be enough to make them turn their life around and go to rehab, but it’s worth a shot, and it helps to get it all out on the table. Try to talk to the addict and see if they will open up about why they’re doing the things they’re doing. This is not likely either, but this is also worth a shot. If the person hasn’t had trouble for long with drugs, you’ll want to continue to try to talk to the person. Most times, if a person hasn’t been on drugs or alcohol for a long time, they’ll be willing to talk things out and get the issue ironed out through love and friendship. In other cases, this is not the case at all.

If the addict is still being stubborn, it’s time to raise the stakes quite high. Alcohol and drug addiction affects everybody around the addict in a negative way. Being affected by it is similar to being the addict, yourself. To truly encourage the addict to go to rehab, you must be firm. Let the addict know that if he/she doesn’t decide to go to rehab, you will cut all ties off with him/her. Drug and alcohol addiction is a dangerous illness to meddle with, and if the person is not cooperating, then you must not stick around. This is not to be rude or mean, this is simply to protect yourself in the situation overall.

If the addict is a close relative, such as a son or daughter, you might want to consider cutting all financial ties off. If you are supplying the addict with money, there’s a 99% chance you are supplying the addiction. Enabling the addiction is definitely not the route to take with this. Cutting the addict off will more than likely stir up strong emotion, but it has to be done if you wish to see the relative get better.