I know in our case, financial worries have been a contributing factor to not get treatment (like rehab is too expensive, and can’t afford to see a therapist ongoing have been big ones) as well as a contributing factor to stress => relapse.
I’m interested if others have had similar experiences and what other ways have finances and addiction interplayed in your situation?
**it is an expensive journey especially with two but having them clean makes me feel pretty good so I’m glad I can help out. Retirement may be a long way off tho sigh **
From my experience, my fiance’ s family has paid for everything from rehab to methadone treatment to recovery counseling. It’s been an up and down battle even with all of that support. From what I’ve seen trying to support her, it is enormously expensive to seek treatment. Doing it on your own can be very very difficult and in many cases lead to finding alternatives that are by no means safe. Sitting in at a methadone clinic, I’ve seen many good people turned away or having they’re treatments stopped for financial reasons. My fiance being one if those people for a period of time. Those people are left to deal with the withdrawal symptoms and for the most part end up using again. Watching a loved one go through opioid withdrawal is heartbreaking and honestly scary as hell. Her and I have always talked about, if we were to become wealthy enough to start up local clinics for people that is affordable to anyone maybe even free. If you truly truly want to break the cycle, to change your life and start living healthy and happy, then there should be the support and tools out there to do that regardless of where you are financially. I feel like the cost of treatment, in my experience for opioid addiction is a big factor that is hindering the fight against the epidemic that it is today.
Finances played a major role in my dad’s struggles with addiction. In fact, it was probably the main contributing factor to perpetuating his problem. When times were tough financially, my dad would cope with the stress by drinking. However, it never ended up fixing the problem, and often made the situation much worse. My dad began seeking treatment at AA, but continuing treatment became extremely tough, as taking time for treatment meant spending less time at work making money for our family of six. All the money he spent on alcohol didn’t help, and perpetuated the toxic cycle even further.
Simply curious, @ashleykm3 - did your family talk openly about finances and/or your dad’s addiction, or was it kind of “hush hush?” In either case, how did that affect your family’s experience?
@katie it was sort of a mix.
It was always obvious and apparent to my siblings and I that my parents were struggling financially, as we lived paycheck to paycheck and often had to say “no” to things that involved spending any sort of disposable income. As we grew older, we stopped taking family vacations.
As for my dad’s addiction, it was sort of this elephant in the room that was only discussed after things escalated during my parents’ drunken arguments. Otherwise, my siblings and I would never talk about it with each other— it just made us so upset that we tried to hold onto the time when things were good before they got bad again.
I didn’t feel as if finances were a consideration. To me, the problem was, is, and always will be convincing the family member that he or she (in my case, multiple family members) must get help. They speak openly about the addiction–it’s difficult to pretend you’re not drunk–but not about getting help. Conversations generally centered around excuses. I’ve had pretty good luck finding financial resources for addiction assistance, but it is true that people are treated with more respect when they pay for help. The more it costs to stay in a rehab hospital, the better the treatment. However, I’ve also found that this does not determine whether or not the person with the addiction is going to recover. I’ve often thought that if I had to stay in a humiliating, bullying, abusive hospital in order to recover from an addiction, that would be incentive enough for me to stay sober, but that’s not how it works. It doesn’t matter if the rehab or counseling is free or expensive. The only thing that matters is the motivation of the person with the addiction.
It has played a big role on road to recovery and helping your loved one through recovery and making a life after. God has his hands in all of this and will see us through the bad as well as good.
I can tell you unequivocally that finances play a role in any family dealing with an addicted loved one. We threw money at the problem for years. Paying off bills, bailing them out of trouble, etc. We paid for treatments too. The bottom line is this. If the addict isn’t ready to get better, no amount of money in the world will help them. And even then, relapse is part of recovery.
We’ve been at it for eleven years now. We would do a lot of things differently if we could turn back the clock. It’s a disease. Diseases need treatment. Unfortunately, crime usually accompanies addiction, so they get put into the prison system rather than treatment.
I found a great resource for any parents out there dealing with an addicted son or daughter. It’s PAL (parents of addicted loved ones). you can check it out here - https://palgroup.org/
Thanks for sharing, @Bultmancd! Can you share in what specific ways finances have played a role on the road to recovery?
There are tons of things we would have done differently.
First and foremost, treat him like an adult. Addicts exhibit childlike behavior. Our trap as parents is to treat them like they are acting, not like the adults they are. That’s enabling and not helpful to them our us.
We caused ourselves tremendous financial problems bailing our son out of the financial messes he got himself into. That’s in the top two of things I’d advise parents to never do. I’m a financial advisor by profession. I know better. Yet we went down that road and it cost us big time. It hurt us and enabled him.
We let him, his wife, and her son (8 or 9 at the time) move in with us. Never should have done that. I can’t even get into the problems that caused.
Parents need to protect themselves from their adult son or daughter’s addiction. When we first discovered it, things moved so fast and furiously. That’s when we made the worst decisions.
Thanks for this @fredleam! If you could turn back the clock, what are 1-2 things you might do differently?! (Perhaps as it relates to finance…)
@fredleam My husband and I get Money Magazine and I just reread the article you had referenced where you contributed. I am happy that a major publication is bringing addiction “out of the closet” and that families like yours were willing to go public with your story. That takes a lot of courage and is so helpful to the rest of us dealing with this issue in our own families. Thank you.
I agree that treating your adult child with addiction as an adult is important to allow them to become responsible and find their own way in life. There are no easy answers, since opioid addiction has such severe consequences including imprisonment, homelessness or death.
I do wish the article had given more attention to the different medication based treatments, but I understand the focus was financial. I’m glad you are a part of this forum.