In addictions counseling I frequently hear outrage that, “My partner still doesn’t trust me!” I ask how long they were active in addiction? They usually respond with a high number of years. I ask how long they’ve been sober? They explain a few months. I raise an eyebrow at the contrast and they usually get it.

As family members, we struggled from the beginning to find both our own support system and ways to engage and encourage William in recovery. In the beginning we kept William’s and our battle to ourselves, in the interest of protecting his privacy and ours. He still had career goals and ambitions that could be thwarted with heroin use on his “resumé.” While it’s harder to admit, we also kept quiet out of some sense of embarrassment or shame. How could we possibly explain the corrosion in the midst of our well-reared, respectable family?

What happens when the family itself becomes the proverbial saber-toothed tiger? Children cannot flee – where would they go? They cannot fight, because they would lose. So they shut down; they freeze; they flee on the inside. But without somehow processing what’s going on for them, that numbed and frozen pain can live within the self system, an emotional accident waiting to happen.

A few months ago, someone provided a simple image of a spiral that helped clarify how and when a family member should help an addict. Spiralling downwards: don't touch (except, of course, for confronting your loved one with the problem and a solution). Spiralling up: give your full support. This image has helped me and my mom as we deal with a close family member struggling with alcoholism. We simply ask ourselves, "Is he spiralling up?", before we invest our time and energy. Our love for him is constant either way.

Lois’ life got more hellish when her husband insisted on bringing alcoholics home with him to dry out. “I guess I thought that once he stopped drinking, everything would go back to what it was like before – happy and loving,” she said. She often felt excluded and grew resentful of Bill's fellowship meetings.