Should I Give Money to Someone in Addiction?

Should you give money to someone in addiction? I was the one asking for it, so let me tell you what it actually bought.

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

Seventeen years sober now. I asked my family for money more times than I can count, and I had a reason ready every single time.

What the reasons were

Gas. Rent. A bill. Food. Somebody I owed. Something urgent, something specific, something with a number attached, because a number sounds like a real thing.

Sometimes the reason was even true. That is the part people miss. It was not all invention. The money would go exactly where I said it would, and then other money came free somewhere else, and the addiction got fed either way.

I was not sitting there designing that. But I want to be honest: underneath, I knew. I knew what the money was doing, I asked anyway, and I got good at asking the person most likely to say yes.

Why it was almost always you

Not because you are gullible. Because you love them.

You are the one who cannot stand the thought of them cold, or hungry, or getting hurt over sixty dollars. The addiction knows exactly which door opens. That was never a comment on your intelligence. It is a comment on your love, and it used it.

What happened when it stopped

My family stopped. The money went away and I felt it immediately.

Did that get me sober? No. Nothing anyone did got me sober. But it took away something that had been quietly holding the whole thing up, and it made the addiction more expensive to keep running. That mattered, even though it took a long time to show.

The part I would underline: they stopped the money without becoming unreachable. I never once thought they were gone. If I had to point at one thing, I would point at that combination rather than at either half by itself.

What I will not tell you

Whether to say yes tonight. I do not know your person, whether they are safe, or what happens in your house if you say no.

Anyone handing you a flat rule about this from the outside is not the one who has to live there afterward. That decision is yours, and it is allowed to be a different decision on different nights.

If you have been saying yes

You were not being weak. You were being their mother, or his wife, or her brother, in a situation with no good options and no instructions.

Deciding to stop now does not turn the years of yes into a mistake. It makes them what they were, which was love doing the only thing it could think of at the time.

If things are heavy right now

If you want to think it through with somebody first, SAMHSA's free helpline in the US is 1-800-662-4357, 24/7. In Canada, 211 connects you with addiction services in your province. If you or someone you love is in crisis, call or text 988, any time. It works in the US and Canada.

Why Haven exists

Nobody was talking my family through decisions like this one. They just had to guess, over and over, at eleven at night. Haven is what I am building so the next family does not have to guess alone. It is in final review now, and the waitlist is at joinprojecthaven.com.