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For family and friends

It’s happening to you too.

Someone you love is drinking, using, gambling, or can’t stop something else. This page is for you, not for them.

There are rooms for you

Family and friends have fellowships of their own. You go for yourself: not to report on them, and not to get them to stop. They don’t have to be in recovery for you to go, and they don’t have to know you went.

  • Gam-Anon

    For the family and friends of someone who gambles.

  • Al-Anon

    For the family and friends of someone who drinks. Alateen, part of Al-Anon, is for teenagers.

  • Nar-Anon

    For the family and friends of someone who uses drugs.

  • SMART Recovery Family & Friends

    For anyone affected by someone else’s addiction, whatever it is. It isn’t a 12-step program.

Each name goes to the fellowship’s own site. Limiter is not affiliated with any of them. If you have never been to a meeting, here is what the first one is like.

What backfires

Almost all of these come from love, and from fear. Most of them push it further out of sight.

Moralising
They already know it’s wrong. A lecture adds shame, and shame is where it hides.
Confronting
An ambush, or a showdown in the middle of a bad night. Someone cornered defends; they don’t listen. Talk when it’s calm.
Interrogating
Checking the phone, the bank and the story, every night. You turn into an investigator, it wears you down, and they get better at hiding.
Bailouts
Paying the debt so the trouble goes away. The trouble goes, and so does a reason to stop.
Playing therapist
Diagnosing, treating, managing their recovery for them. You’re their person, not their clinician. That job belongs to someone trained for it.

What to say

Talk when things are calm, not in the middle of it. Keep it short. Then listen.

Start with a question

Help me understand what’s been happening.

Then let them finish, even when it’s hard to hear. A question gets you the story. A verdict gets you a defence.

Say what it does to you

Talk about what you see and feel, not about what they are.

Not “You’re destroying this family.”

I’m frightened, and I miss you.

Not “You always lie.”

I felt shut out when I heard it from someone else.

Stand on the same side

It’s the two of you against the problem, not you against them.

We’re on the same side. It’s us against this.

A boundary, in three sentences

A boundary is about what you will do, not what they must do. That’s what makes it one you can keep.

  1. What you won’t do any more. “I’m not going to lend you money.”
  2. What you’ll do instead. “If you need food or rent, I’ll pay the shop or the landlord myself.”
  3. What doesn’t change. “I love you. That doesn’t change.”

Say it once, calmly. Then do what you said, every time. You don’t owe it a second explanation.

This is not your fault.

Nothing you said or didn’t say started it, and nothing you do on your own will end it. What’s yours to look after is you: your sleep, your money, your friends, a meeting of your own. Looking after that isn’t giving up on them.

If money is part of it

When they’re ready to tell you all of it, there’s a sheet for that: every kind of account, card, loan and debt, each with a line for yes or no. A “no” is an answer. A blank isn’t.

It’s theirs to fill in, not yours to demand. The full list, to print.

Limiter is for the person who is stopping. You don’t need it.

Limiter is on the App Store and Google Play. The app tells no one what they do in it, you included. They decide what to share.