Drug Or Alcohol Addiction in Your Family

If you are in love with an addict then you have some thinking to do. Most people who get involved with addicts spend far too much time following their heart. They think they are being understanding and compassionate towards the addict when in fact they are enabling the person.
If you are going to have any type of lasting relationship with the often emotionally unavailable addict you need to understand the concept of unconditional love. This means not having any expectations of the person who is sick with the disease of alcoholism. In fact, the more you humor an addict in the name of love, the more codependent you are with the addict or alcoholic.
Another word for unconditional love is 'tough love.' This is to avoid 'enabling' which only makes the alcoholic or drug addict you are in love with more destructive to you.
Enabling is a term used in Twelve Step recovery to describe the behavior of family members, or other loved ones, who rescue an alcoholic or drug addict from the consequences of their own self destructive behavior. If you are in love with someone you may feel that rescuing him or her is what must happen but that is not true.
No matter how devoted you are to someone, you should not rescuing anyone who is caught up in any of the compulsive or addictive self destructive behaviors that are symptoms of codependency. Besides doing drugs or drinking too much these behaviors include gambling, spending, eating disorders, sexual or relationship addictions; and the inability to hold a job.
A person who is acting out self destructively has no reason to change if they do not ever suffer major consequences for their behavior. If they are rescued from consequences, they are enabled to continue practicing their addiction.
This might be confusing because the term unconditional love implies that we love them no matter what we do. This is true but when we do love the addict it is supposed to be with a sense of loving detachment. This means that we let them make their own mistakes without meddling or interfering.
The theory behind codependency is that we react to the alcoholic to spare ourselves the pain of having to watch the alcoholic destroy him or herself. They are being selfish which is human and normal. The idea is to set oneself up as a victim and abuse or shame the loved one so that they feel shame. Unfortunately feeling more shame makes the addict want drink even more.
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Rescuing someone who is actively practicing addiction of some kind, is also a form of enabling. It is dysfunctional because it supports the person in continuing to practice their addiction. A person in recovery working on getting healthier may need some help from time to time – and that is great, that is being supportive in a positive manner. Helping someone to continue to self destruct is not support is codependency. It does not really qualify as love.

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Pain Relief Without Drugs

Chronic pain and the wish to stop being so dependent on pain relievers is what sends many people to chiropractors. In fact, pain is the chief complaint of 80% of first time visitors to a chiropractor. Fortunately if there is one thing that chiropractic care is known for it is for relieving headaches, back pain, arm and shoulder pain, hip or leg pain, nerve pain and pain involving muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones and joints with drugs!

Statistics show that U.S. citizens take about twenty billion aspirin each year for headaches. Millions of people take even stronger headache remedies that are prescribed by a doctor or sold over the counter. However for many users only temporary relief is provided and the pain comes back even worse than before. This is also known as rebound pain and rebound pain can become more excruciating over time as well.

There are also tons of pain relievers on the market for such problems as bursitis, sinusitis, backache and other ailments that never seem to go away for good. You should also not take medication over a long period of time as you can become addicted. Furthermore strong medications can cover up the root cause of the pain while at the same time doing nothing for the real cause of the pain. This type of approach to pain management can encourage a minor problem to become major and a one-time problem to become persistent. That is why the chief goal of a chiropractic doctor is to find the cause of the pain and manipulate the soft tissue, spine and nerve pathways so it goes away for good. This spares you the addiction and side effects of taking drugs to treat pain in the first place.

Chiropractic heals through tissue manipulations that encourage the body to do the job itself. Under normal circumstances the human body will take steps to correct any damage caused by injury or illness on its own without any help from doctor. However sometimes an injury or illness is too severe and the body needs help to do its job. Sometimes a person's normal healing responses are insufficient to meet the challenge and this is where a doctor, like a chiropractic doctor can be of assistance to nature. One of the theories of chiropractic healing is that the ability to recover is dependent on a patient's vitality, not on the doctor and that the chiropractor is there to gently nudge the nerves and tissues into healing themselves by manipulating them back into position or releasing blockages.

If you don't want your kids to always be turning to drugs for help this is one way to get around it.

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