How to Set Boundaries With an Addict

How do you set boundaries with an addict? I'm the wrong person to teach you that, and I want to say so up front. Everyone answering this question teaches the how. I can't, because I was the addict. I was on the receiving end.

This is lived experience from one recovery, not medical advice.

What I can tell you is something the how-to guides can't: what the boundary did when it landed on me. What it felt like from inside the addiction, and what I understand about it now, sixteen years sober. If you're standing at the edge of a decision like this, I figure the view from my side of it might be worth something.

The boundary that landed on me

About three months before I got sober, my parents cut me off. No more money. No more covering for me. The support system that had been quietly absorbing the cost of my using shut down.

They never stopped loving me. I want that on the record, because the boundary and the love ran at the same time, the whole time.

But honestly? It felt like punishment. I was angry. Back then I would have called it cruel. If you set a boundary and the person on the other end of it calls you cold, or cruel, or says you've given up on them, I said versions of all of that. I believed them when I said them.

Same boundary, both things true

Sixteen years sober, I call that same moment something else entirely: the moment my choices finally belonged to me.

Same boundary. Both things true. It felt like punishment and it was the start of my accountability, at the same time, in the same act. I didn't have to stop feeling one for the other to be real.

That's the thing I most want you to take from my side of the fence. What a boundary feels like and what a boundary is are not the same thing. Mine felt like a wall. Now I understand it as the most honest thing they gave me. Everything else people had tried on me, the lectures, the arguments, the pleading, was easier to receive than that boundary, and none of it told the truth the way the boundary did.

What I can't promise you

But my road is not a formula. I have to say that plainly. I can't promise a boundary saves anybody. Nobody honest can promise you that, and you should be careful with anyone who does.

And if you set one and still lost your person, the boundary didn't do that. Their choices belonged to them, the same way mine belonged to me. That's not a line I'm saying to be kind. It's the actual structure of the thing. My parents' boundary handed my choices back to me. What I did with them was mine.

And if you haven't set one, I'm not condemning you. That decision is heavier than any video makes it look. It was heavy in my family's hands too, and they carried it a long time before they acted. However long you're taking, you're not failing by taking it.

If things are heavy right now

If you're wrestling with a decision like this, there are people you can talk it through with today. SAMHSA's free helpline is 1-800-662-4357, 24/7, for treatment questions and family guidance. If you or someone you love is in crisis, call or text 988, or text HOME to 741741.

Why Haven exists

My parents made their hardest call with no support behind them, and I built Haven so other families wouldn't have to do it that alone. Haven is an app for the families and loved ones of people in addiction, and it opens August 24. If you want a seat, the waitlist is at joinprojecthaven.com. Offering, not pitch.