This article discusses how to deal with friends and family members addiction to drugs including how to stay positive, protect yourself, live simply, and share the good and bad times.

 For years, I've shared my life with people who are addicted to alcohol or abuse drugs. I wish I could say that it was easy to reach the dispassionate stage where I could say "this is their problem" and not take the blame in some form or other. It takes years to separate your own self-worth from the hurt these people inflict on their loved ones without any awareness. The truth I finally understood was that they loved their drugs even more than they loved any one person. At first, it was okay to just understand that they didn't love me. But after a time, I realized that they didn't love anyone as much as their drug, and least of all themselves. One day I decided no action of mine would change them. Change was their responsibility, not mine.

So saying, I have a funny incident to share. Years ago on an Earthwatch trip to Belize, two men in our group of want-to-be investigators told me about running into this Rasta dude in the middle of the jungle on an overnight mercy trip. The men had taken the rented truck back to town and on the way brought an ill Mayan woman to the hospital, but on the return trip, they had to hoof it.

It was quite dark. Out of the dense vegetation, the sound of a rustle came to their ears. Worried, the men grabbed onto their machetes, but the Rasta man stepped out and said, "Who goes there?" and when the two responded, "We're just passing through." The native man replied, "I ain't going nowhere. I'm slave to the drug lord." We all laughed, after all, partying, smoking a little weed, hey, that's no trouble just a little fun. That is, it's fun for most people.

The truth of addiction being similar to being the slave to the drug lord is a powerful concept that helps understand the actions taken by addicted persons. The drug lord, or God, is almost impossible to refuse.

My Merck medical manual claims that approximately 10% of the population is unable to process alcohol and instead their bodies turn it into an addictive chemical similar in potency to morphine. Knowing this, it's easier to understand that alcohol addicts are powerless against the craving for more and more. Furthermore, alcohol addiction is believed to be a genetic trait. If so, it would probably be a recessive trait since it skips generations and not all family members have it.

So this rules out family responsibility for their loved one's addiction. Blame items like "if we weren't so poor", "if we'd spent more time with them when they were young", and "maybe I punished them too much so they rebelled" have nothing to do with an addict's addiction and everything to do with a person's own guilt and sense of helplessness in the face of the addict's problem. It is something that happens to them, like being the unlucky child that needs glasses or gets multiple sclerosis. A disease that deserves sympathy and a great deal of thankfulness that it didn't happen to you.

So who is this God of theirs? For purposes of this essay, I choose to think of their God as Bacchus, the Roman God of wine. As a young lad, Bacchus learned how to cultivate the grape and turn it into wine. He then proceeded to spread his knowledge all across Europe and to parts of Asia. He is a promoter of civilization, a lawgiver, lover of peace, and a powerful fertility god according to Wikipedia. This essay is all about the good and practical lessons learned while faced by those suffering from Bacchus' gift.

Lesson One: If you laugh, no one hates you.

Everyone who has sipped an alcoholic drink has discovered its effects. People get more relaxed, laugh and get silly, they lose their inhibitions and fear. Suddenly, they find they no longer fear talking, or dating, or kissing, or experiencing something new. We are all somewhat prisoners of our bodies chemistry, when the signals transfer to our brain and say you feel pain or terror or incompetent, we can suffer. To overcome our terrors we have to repeatedly face them, all the while our muscles freeze up, we become too aware of our clothing or imperfections, we sweat, our bellies give us butterflies. Not pleasant, but we do all share these responses.

Alcohol helps us overcome our nervousness. It relaxes those stiff muscles. It makes us laugh.

So in the next paragraphs where I talk about some of the unpleasant aspects of living with an alcoholic, what I remember most were the times we laughed together. It is easy to love someone who you laugh with, in fact, laughter is the true cure for nervousness and self-consciousness. Most of the alcoholics I've known have had this wonderful laugh. You want to laugh just to hear it. You like them. And in many cases you also love them.

 This is Bacchus' true gift to us. The gift of laughter, ease and love. Given that the alcoholics in our lives have an illness, laughter is what leads us to forgive and want to help them.

Lesson Two: Protect yourself.

But if you have a choice, don't choose to have an addict in your life. However, the sad truth is one rarely has a choice. If you share your life with an addict, learn to protect yourself.

Some alcoholics turn violent. When they get angry, you find holes in your walls. You find breakables broken. I've lived in fear of someone breaking in with an axe intent on murder. There is little you can do to protect yourself against someone who plants an axe in your head while you sleep but here are some I've come up with:

I've taken self-defense classes where I've learned how to escape some holds, but I also learned your best defense is to run.

If someone breaks in, I plan to grab my cell phone, car keys and run -- better by far than to have that person use your own gun to murder you.

In one single story home, I had gravel mulch on my garden beds under my window. It works well at keeping moisture within the dirt, is easy to weed and has the added benefit that if someone steps on it, even a cat, it makes noise. Another two story home had a deck on one side and a roof over the garage on the other side so that I had many routes of escape.

I have objects in my windows that make noise, on the windowsills that are difficult to move, and wood to keep the windows from sliding easily.

But beyond personal defense, protect your emotional self. Don't support their addiction by giving them cash, drugs and alcohol, or do things for them that they should do for themselves, and don't do things for them that they won't do for you. Rely on the legal system to judge their behavior. Learn to keep peace in your own life.

This is the gift Bacchus brings us, on one hand we have the gift to relax and enjoy ourselves, on the other hand, we have the gift of law to protect us.

Lesson Three: Live simply. Don't buy anything you can't afford to lose.

If you spend any time with someone with a drinking or drug problem, you may soon find out they have light fingers. There is never enough money -- money to spend on alcohol or drugs. When the addicted don't have the cash, which is quite often since they typically can not keep a job, they simply take your stuff. I've had my last twenty dollars on which I planned to eat all week simply disappear. Jewelry, rare coins, electronics, tools have all disappeared to the pawnshop. If you think it's annoying to buy such things once, think how it feels to pay for it twice and when you pay the second time, it's not even new. Know the locations of the local pawnshops and check there first for your stolen goods.

If you leave your house or car keys lying around expect trouble. It is very easy to snatch them up, take them to a locksmith and have the keys copied. Then, once you leave believing in the safety of your stuff, an alcoholic can simply unlock your locks and take your stuff. Next morning, you awake and your car is gone, or worse yet, is parked but all mysteriously smashed up. Alternatively, items out of your house are missing and nobody saw anything unusual.

Don't keep spare checks lying around the house, even if the account has been closed. Checks are an invitation to forgery, especially for someone you may be too emotionally committed to prosecute.

Some things you can't avoid buying, so make sure your insurance policy is up-to-date at all times, since it may be the only way you can recover from a theft or if your property is damaged like having your tires slashed.

One thing is true about our civilization is if you have valuables, someone may take them. Not all criminals are addicts, and not all know you personally, but everyone can suffer from theft.

After experiencing some of the above, I began to question my own values. Did I love the god of things? Much of what we deem valuable today becomes the junk of tomorrow.

I don't mind having a ten year old television. It's not worth anyone's trouble to break in and take it. I don't mind not having expensive diamonds, jewels and gold -- crystals are prettier and a fraction of the cost.

In contrast, I learned that no one can take your experiences away from you. My investments have gone to travel, books, things that villains don't value. Would I have the same attitudes without living with an alcoholic? Probably not.

This then is Bacchus' second gift, the gift of civilization. People are interesting the world over. You can't be afraid of the world when some of the worst indignities in life come from your own family.

Lesson Four: Replace negative addictions with positive ones.

From my experience, I believe that we all have addictive behaviors. We develop them for the same reasons that alcoholics choose alcohol. We want to relax and forget. We want to enjoy ourselves.

Few addictions are so difficult to cure as alcohol addiction.

If you're going to have an addiction, at least pick one that can lead you to improve your life. Some people get addicted to exercise; this can lead to a longer, healthier, more productive life. I don't know that I will ever find work and sweat something I can laugh over, but I have seen that it sharpens my mind, gives me more energy, and improves my sense of optimism.

I can lose track of my responsibilities and forget what time it is, simply by immersing myself in a good book. Reading relaxes me and I lose my self-consciousness, I literally go to another world. In return it has brought me a larger world.

There is Bacchus' underlying gift, the gift of fun and play, but we don't need alcohol to find it.

Conclusion

Overall, Bacchus' gift's are a double-edged sword. On one had he brings us family and enjoyment; on the other hand he brings us crime and the legal system; he brings us civilization and the means of destroying it. Therefore, even if a person's addiction is their own problem that they need to resolve, it is also society's problem.

I laud the action taken by many Native American's in making their reservations alcohol-free areas. The have acted on the knowledge of their genetic propensity like doctors acting to vaccinate their patient's against disease. However, this solution doesn't work for the majority of the population who don't have a problem and don't need the vaccination.

I'd like to see a genetic test that can be given to infants at birth and an education policy of explaining to these individuals the consequences of their disease should they drink alcohol, before they lose control of their selves and their lives.

I'd like to see a legal system that penalizes individual's who misuse alcohol by depriving them of this privilege. When someone drinks and drives, they don't have a problem with their driving, they have a problems with their use of alcohol. Our system already requires an identification check to buy alcohol. It would be easy to modify their identification to record their inability to manage their alcohol use.

I'd like to see a less puritanical educational system -- one that embraces play and addiction to positive activities, one that recognizes youth as being self-aware and ready to know more about themselves, one that allows individuals to accept who they are including all of their fears.

When our society is ready to change how we deal with addiction, I think the world will be more civilized and we will suffer less from crime.

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