An Addict Without Their Addiction

7 Jan

There’s an illusion we often hold that if we remove the substance, the behaviour, the thing we believe is causing the harm, then everything will be right again.

As if that one thing is the kryptonite.

But healing has taught me otherwise.

I’ve been fortunate and I use that word intentionally, to learn from people who have had to fight their demons. To hear their stories, to witness the harm caused, the long road of accountability, forgiveness, and reckoning. And what so many of them eventually realise is this:

The addiction was never the core problem.

It was what they were seeking. What they were trying to numb. What they were getting in exchange.

You can take away the substance, the behaviour, the coping mechanism but if the root remains unseen, the patterns don’t disappear. They redirect. They soften their edges, maybe. They become more socially acceptable, more hidden, more complex. But they are still there.

Because to truly heal requires vulnerability. It requires sitting with shame and guilt not bypassing them, not fixing them but allowing ourselves to face the very parts the addiction has been protecting us from feeling, remembering, or experiencing.

A walk, a stranger, and a reminder

Yesterday felt like a series of quiet signs the kind you only notice when you’re paying attention.

Last night I needed a walk. It was warm, and I felt this deep pull toward solitude. No Matt. No kids. No phone. Just space.

I’m lucky our doorstep opens into beauty. As I walked, I became absorbed in my senses. The strange vibrational sounds of insects communicating through the trees, their hum moving through and around my body. The faint hint of dill growing wild somewhere nearby. The contrast of the landscape vines, paddocks, pines the canopy opening just enough to let a breeze through.

I was in awe of the quiet.

On my way back, I heard a sound similar to the insects but then a man called out, “Don’t move.” He was coming up behind me on an electric bike. He stopped, apologised, and we began to talk.

He told me he was in his 70s. I told him how incredible it was that he was still so fit.

And then, for reasons I may never fully understand, this stranger shared his story.

His demons. His struggles. His addictions.

I wasn’t just listening to his words I recognised the story. I’ve heard it in many forms, through many people. But what stood out was this: he wasn’t asking to be rescued.

He wanted forgiveness.

He was lost in how to heal the harm he had caused. He felt the weight of shame and guilt and didn’t know where to put it.

And what I felt so strongly in that moment was that he had already taken the most important step.

Acknowledgement

So often, when we struggle, we try to fix, avoid, justify, or change anything but sit in the discomfort of owning what we’ve done. Yet without acknowledgement, nothing truly shifts.

The connection I didn’t see at first

As I write this, I realise what led me to that walk in the first place.

One of my children struggles to say sorry.

And I see how not being able to say those words creates suffering for the one who is hurt, and for the one holding it all inside. Without repair, there is no release. The body holds it. Relationships fracture. Distance grows from ourselves and from others.

I don’t believe bumping into that man was by chance.

In the light of a new day, I can see it as preparation.

Because later that evening, an email arrived.

It spoke about honesty but the language wasn’t honesty. It was self-soothing. Justification. Reframing harm so the sender could live with themselves.

This is what loving someone with addiction feels like.

A constant loop.

Living in fight or flight. Waiting for the next surprise. A nervous system that never fully softens because, on some level, you know the person hasn’t truly begun healing.

It’s why so many of us are now realising that talk therapy alone is often not enough.

When meaning is sold

The email stirred something raw in me.

An object not of monetary value, but of deep meaning had been sold to continue destructive behaviour. This wasn’t a small keepsake. It was something each of us held tightly. A reminder of someone we lost. Perhaps the part of her that was good.

She never took it off. It was the thing she valued most.

And just like that, in a familiar pattern, the person entrusted with her care sold it, even before the will was finalised.

I felt anger. Briefly.

But when you have tools when you know how to regulate, to sit with your own discomfort and ask what’s underneath something else emerges.

Compassion.

Compassion for the part of me that was upset.

And compassion for the person who has lived with pain in ways I can’t fully imagine.

But compassion does not mean enabling.

And this is where I feel something important gets lost even within trauma-informed spaces. “All is welcome” can become distorted. As if welcoming experience means bypassing accountability. As if compassion means pretending harm doesn’t exist.

Some things must be brought into the light.

Seeing the pattern clearly

I said to the other party who didn’t want to enable, but desperately wanted to fix the problem:

“It’s sold. It was left in her care. She knew what had happened in the past. This is not ours to repair.”

And then something deeper landed for me.

The person I was attached to, the one whose memory that object represented was also someone who enabled harm. Even in her death, the patterns continued.

She placed no safety around her estate. Despite strong legal advice, she didn’t put boundaries in place — for the person she loved most, and who struggled most.

We have to look beyond emotion. Beyond the surface problem.

Because the truth is confronting:

An unhealed addict who no longer uses is still an addict.

Letting go as an act of love

Three years ago, I severed ties with my mother.

Not out of punishment. Not from a lack of forgiveness.

But from necessity.

When patterns don’t change, when safety isn’t possible, staying becomes enabling not loving. Removing myself was an act of protection. For my own healing. For my nervous system. For the cycle to have even a chance of ending.

I was questioned endlessly.

As a daughter. As a sister.

But on both accounts, I could no longer enable or quietly observe.

Sometimes we believe we must stay that we owe something, that we are responsible for another person’s healing.

But real love doesn’t trap people in patterns.