What To Do When Your Family Member Comes Home From Substance Abuse Treatment

Welcoming a family member home after substance abuse** treatment is an emotionally charged time. Family members are usually excited, encouraged, and hopeful. They are also usually hesitant, guarded, and uncertain. Use my 6-point checklist below to help guide your decisions and interactions in the early days and weeks after your loved one comes home from treatment.  

6 Point Checklist

1. Become educated regarding addiction as an illness and disease. To have a healthy and informed response to the family member, it’s vital that you understand the basics of substance use disorder. There is a lot of information available regarding the substance use disorder; perhaps you had some information regarding that during your family member’s treatment.  
2. Develop Your Own Recovery Habits or Program. Being in relationship with someone who abuses substances creates habits of thinking and responding that are unhealthy and deteriorate your own mental health. This means you need to consider your OWN healing regardless of the short, intermediate, or long-term outcome of your family member’s sobriety. I have a PDF that explains this. Contact me if you’d like this article.
3. Open Communication and Have (even difficult) Conversations. Healthy communication can be tricky even under the best of circumstances. Early in recovery, both the family members and the recovering person may feel awkward and hesitant. Have the conversations anyway. Engage the help of experienced persons or professionals if necessary. I have a video about the unexpected stress of early sobriety on families.
4. Enjoy. Seriously. Do fun things, establish new rituals such as Friday Movie Nights. Laugh. Play. Laughter and positive interaction create healing chemicals, beneficial to everyone involved. I have written a blog post on the recovery benefits of laughter here.
5. Set the stage for hope and the expectation that this can work. Do your part to allow your family member to return to a setting in which they feel welcome and create the expectation that this can work. Being able to do this may necessitate that you do your own work in a recovery group or with a therapist, but possibly an informed friend or two will be able to support you as you work through your stuff while doing your part to create an atmosphere of “welcome positive expectancy.”
6. Reduce Temptations. Practical changes such as properly disposing of no longer needed prescriptions, eliminating or reducing the alcohol in the home, and declining invitations in which “party” with psycho-active substances is the central focus are needed. However, be mindful to not take so much responsibility and care that you are walking on eggshells and trying to not “trigger” the person in recovery. Remember; they are responsible for their own recovery plan and program.

So, Now What?

There are some things you should NOT do, and I have written a blog post about that here. 

I realize that these are tender and complicated days full of mixed emotions. I encourage you to be gentle with yourself AND your family member. You’ve been through difficult times. You can contact me for a  PDF about “Why You Need Help if They Are the One With the Substance Use Disorder?”  

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**Person-centered language note: As a leading clinician in substance use disorder assessment, treatment, and recovery, I am committed to elevating the language around mental health and substance use disorder. This means I will use “alcohol use disorder” rather than “alcoholic.” It means I will use “person with a substance use disorder” rather than “addict.” I minimize my use of the term addiction because it carries stigma, often people have their own relationship with the word accompanied with misinformation. I use the term recurrence or return to use rather than relapse. However, it’s important that people searching for help get connected with services that benefit them. In this regard, people are not searching “am I a person with a substance use disorder?” They are searching “am I an addict?” They do not search, “can a high functioning person have an alcohol use disorder?” They search “am I a high functioning alcoholic.” They don’t search “treatment for people who have a recurrence” but do search “how do I stop being a chronic relapser?” As such, I want to affirm people with substance use disorders with my care, which includes language but I also need to structure my business in a way that google searches find my material.