The Enabler

Ordinarily when we enable someone it doesn’t carry deleterious affects.  But when it comes to alcoholics some of our earthling loved ones and friends do more harm than good when they try to enable our drinking and our misshapen attitudes that accompany our dis-ease with excuses for themselves and to anyone who might question why it is that they were putting up with us.    Enabling takes many forms and it’s not just turning a blind eye to our alcoholic drinking. It includes making rationalizations and setting the table for us to continue our drinking.    

 Enabling can be a part time or a full time job for some depending on just how deep our addiction is.  My ex-wife would buy me vodka and never let me run out of that liquid nitro. She was happy just not to have me snorting cocaine and my drinking was perfectly acceptable in her eyes because it was not an illegal substance and drinking was something everybody did.  

A friend of mine who is loyal to a fault is constantly trying to rationalize why a close friend of his keeps relapsing. He thinks it’s because his friend needs a geographic change because they are lonely and have no car.  In his mind  he is being a good friend by sticking by his alcoholic friend.  The point is enabling just makes it easier for the drinker in their life to continue picking up and can actually exacerbate things. We alcoholics when we think we can get away with our behavior will push the envelope. And when the alcoholic starts to get the idea that the enabler in their life is giving them a free pass they will manipulate by any means necessary. Tears, pleading and if that fails even outright intimidation like a spoiled child.  The enabler might as well be just pouring and handing us the drink.  

It’s funny because when we get sober we become intolerant of enablers even though our very drinking lives depended on having some of those pawns in our lives.