Addiction doesn’t only hurt the person with a drug or alcohol addiction. It also affects everyone around them. Friends and family often go through a lot of stress, confusion, and sadness. They may try to help, but over time, they can feel tired, frustrated, or even hopeless.
Addiction can change people. It can damage trust, break communication, and cause deep emotional pain. The effects of addiction can be hard to see at first, but they grow more visible and impactful the longer addiction goes on. If you’ve ever wondered how addiction can affect family and friends, the answer includes more than just emotional stress. It often involves broken routines, financial strain, and often a deep sense of loss.
Understanding how addiction affects loved ones can help families and friends find better ways to cope. They may also be able to help their loved one or family member begin the road to recovery.
How Addiction Can Impact Relationships?
When someone is dealing with addiction, it can change not only their habits but who they are in the eyes of their loved ones. Substances can alter behavior, shift priorities, and push people toward decisions that can cause long-term damage to their relationships.
Behavior and Emotional Changes
Under the influence of drugs, people often behave in ways that are out of character. Substances can amplify emotions, causing outbursts of anger, paranoia, or extreme sadness. Others may become withdrawn, unresponsive, or disinterested in their responsibility and the people around them. These shifts can be confusing and hurtful to those close to them, especially when the behavior becomes a repeated pattern.
Long Periods of No Contact
As addiction progresses, isolation often follows. People might go days or weeks without checking in, answering messages, or showing up for important events. This distancing is rarely intentional — it can be fueled by shame, feelings of depression, or a desire to avoid judgment. Still, the results (missed birthdays, broken plans, and a sense of abandonment) can be painful.
Loss of Trust
Trust is the backbone of any relationship, and addiction can slowly dismantle trust. People who are addicted may lie about how much they’re using, where they’ve been, or what they’ve done. At first, the lies might be small or infrequent. But over time, they become harder to hide and harder for others to forgive. Loved ones may feel manipulated or betrayed, making it difficult to believe anything the addicted person says even when they are telling the truth.
Emotional and Psychological Distress
The emotional toll on the family and friends of an addicted person is often overwhelming. Watching a loved one spiral can cause chronic stress, anxiety, and depression. Parents may blame themselves, siblings might feel forgotten, and partners can be left feeling that they have to keep everything together. This emotional load can also lead to physical symptoms, such as fatigue, insomnia, and a weakened immune system.
Legal Trouble and Loss of Custody
Addiction frequently brings legal consequences. DUI charges, arrests, or drug possession cases can affect not just the arrested person but their entire family. When children are involved, the stakes are even higher. The justice system may step in, resulting in custody battles or the complete loss of parental rights. This can not only devastate the family unit but leave children with deep emotional scars.
Neglect and Mistreatment of Children
In households where addiction is present (especially in parents or caregivers), children are often left in unstable or neglectful environments. Addiction can impair decision-making and diminish someone’s ability to care for others. This can lead to missed meals, periods without supervision, or dangerous living conditions. This neglect can not only impact physical health but the child’s emotional development.
Financial Strain
Substance use often comes with financial consequences. Money may be funneled into sustaining the addiction, leaving little for rent, groceries, or bills. Over time, this can drain savings and even lead to homelessness or bankruptcy. Friends or family members might find themselves constantly bailing their loved one out, sometimes paying for legal fees, medical bills, or settling debts. This can create tension in relationships over time.
Repairing relationships damaged by addiction takes time and support. Comprehensive therapies help rebuild trust, improve communication, and address the emotional wounds on both sides. This can offer a clearer path to lasting recovery and healthier connections.
How Family and Friends Can Hinder Recovery From Addiction?
As much as loved ones can want to help someone heal from addiction, their actions can sometimes make things worse without them realizing it. Understanding these common pitfalls can help families be supportive in a way that truly contributes to recovery.
Codependency
It’s natural for someone to want to protect a person they care about. But when that desire turns into sacrificing their own well-being for another’s, they may in fact be in a codependent relationship. This can look like constantly rescuing their loved one from consequences, making excuses for their behavior, or taking on their responsibilities. In the long run, this doesn’t support recovery — it actually keeps the addicted person stuck in unhealthy patterns. Left unchecked, codependency can drain the person who loves the addict emotionally and create resentment that damages the relationship even further.
Enabling Behavior
Enabling a person’s addiction can include covering up for the person, giving them money, or downplaying the severity of their behavior. It’s usually done out of love. But it can block the consequences and accountability that can be essential for someone realizing that they need help for their addiction. Shielding someone from that process (even out of good intentions) can delay their healing. Stopping enabling behavior often requires outside guidance to recognize patterns and set healthier boundaries.
Unhealthy Family Roles
Addiction often distorts family dynamics, creating unhealthy roles that can keep dysfunction in place. One person might become “the fixer,” always trying to keep the peace. Another might step into the caretaker role, which can sometimes result in a child being the steady presence for their parent. These patterns are usually unconscious, but they can deeply affect the entire family. Recovery means not only healing the addicted individual, but also untangling these roles and building healthier ways of relating to each other.
Stigma and Judgment
Even well-meaning family and friends can unintentionally make recovery harder by expressing judgment, frustration, or disappointment. Comments like “Why can’t you just stop?” can deepen the person’s shame and push them further into isolation. Instead of motivating change, this kind of stigma often reinforces feelings of failure. A more supportive approach is to offer empathy, listen without blame, and create a space where the person feels safe to be honest about their struggles.
Healing Relationships in Recovery
Healing is possible, but it requires effort from everyone and not just the person in recovery. Addiction may have been the trigger, but rebuilding relationships is a collective process.
Self-Care For All
Recovery isn’t just about sobriety. It’s also about healing wounds and rediscovering balance. Family and friends need to prioritize their own self-care, whether physically, emotionally, and mentally. This might mean going to therapy, joining a support group, or simply taking time away to recharge. When each person in a family cares for themselves, they’re better able to support one another.
Setting and Maintaining Boundaries
Boundaries are not about punishment, but protection. Loved ones need to decide what is and isn’t acceptable in the relationship, and communicate that clearly. For example, a boundary may be that the addicted person may not stay at their home if they arrive under the influence. Sticking to these boundaries can be tough, but it shows the addicted person that actions have consequences while still holding the door open for reconnection.
Interventions
In cases where the person is in denial about their addiction, an intervention can be a powerful gesture. When done with love and structure, interventions allow families to express how the person’s addiction has impacted them and offer a clear path forward (often including immediate entrance into a substance abuse treatment program). Professional guidance during an intervention is strongly recommended to avoid escalating tension and to ensure the person is directed toward appropriate care.
Family Programs and Group Therapy
Many recovery centers offer family programs designed to educate and support loved ones receiving treatment for addiction. These programs help the family members understand addiction, learn effective communication skills, and process their own feelings. Participating in these can make a significant difference in long-term recovery and in rebuilding trust. They also remind families that they’re not alone, and that others are walking the same path.
Recover from Addiction at First Steps Recovery
If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, healing is possible. At First Steps Recovery, we understand the deep wounds addiction causes not only to individuals but to the people who care about them. That’s why we offer comprehensive, compassionate care that includes family support every step of the way.
Recovery is not a one-time event. It’s a journey, and no one should have to walk it alone. Contact us today to learn more.
Dr. Curl is the Medical Director and primary on-site provider for First Steps Recovery. He is a Board Certified Internist and Addiction Medicine Specialist having attended the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and completing his residency at Mount Auburn Hospital with Harvard Medical School. Following several years work as an internist and physiatrist (physical medicine and rehabilitation). Dr. Curl completed the Addiction Medicine Fellowship at Howard University in Washington DC and participated as a RAM Scholar (Research in Addiction Medicine). While part of the fellowship, Dr. Curl pursued research investigating the barriers to expanding and improving medication for opioid use disorder. Following his fellowship, Dr. Curl spearheaded the Opiate Use Disorder outpatient clinic and worked in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences within the Howard University Hospital. In 2023, Dr. Curl completed his Board Certification in Addiction Medicine.
