For loved ones
When someone you love is struggling, you are affected too. You didn't cause it and you can't control it — but you can protect yourself, and you can make help more likely.
Understanding and talking
- Understanding a loved one's addictionWhat families often feel, what addiction is and isn't, and how understanding it can make your next steps clearer and kinder — including to yourself.
- How to start a conversationPractical guidance for raising concerns about someone's drinking, drug use, or gambling: timing, words that help, words that hurt, and what to do afterward.
- When someone refuses helpWhat to do when a loved one won't accept help: staying connected, the CRAFT approach, boundaries, safety, and caring for yourself.
Boundaries
- Supporting without enablingHow to tell the difference between support and enabling, with examples of each and ways to change patterns without abandoning someone.
- Setting healthy boundariesHow to set clear, realistic boundaries with someone who has an addiction, and how to hold them when it's hard.
- Financial boundariesPractical ways to protect shared and personal finances when a family member has a gambling or substance problem.
Your relationship
- Supporting a partnerCommon challenges for partners — secrecy, money, intimacy, trust — and ways to support recovery while protecting yourself.
- Supporting a parentFor adult children of parents with addiction: understanding what you grew up with, setting boundaries, and getting support.
- Supporting a child or teenWarning signs in young people, how to talk without pushing them away, overdose safety, and where to get help for adolescents.
- Parenting and addictionHow addiction affects children, what children need to hear, and how parents in recovery can rebuild connection.
Healing together
- Recovery and trustRebuilding trust after addiction, for both the person in recovery and their family.
- Family therapyWhat family and couples therapy for addiction involves, what evidence supports it, and how to find it.
- Protecting your own wellbeingHow family members can look after their own mental health, find support, and recognize when they need professional help.
Printable conversation guide
The Supporting a loved one tool helps you write down what you've noticed, what you want to say, and the boundaries you'll keep — then print or download it.