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How Are Our Relationships and Addictions Related?

Many of us who struggle with addiction and mental health issues also find ourselves in toxic, unhealthy relationships we can’t seem to extricate ourselves from. For years we perpetuate the same relationship patterns, finding ourselves in similar tumultuous relationships and dealing with the same recurring issues and dynamics within those relationships. We often don’t know why we’re constantly picking the same kinds of partners, or being hurt in similar ways, or having the same results. We aren’t conscious of the many ways in which our addictions and relationships are actually related. What do our relationships have to do with our addictions?

A Vicious Cycle 

When we’re in unhappy relationships, we often will turn to alcohol or our drugs of choice for comfort and solace, and vice versa. When we’re feeling debilitated by our addictions and feel as though we have nowhere to turn, we use our relationships to make us feel better. Alcohol or drugs of choice and our relationships can function in similar ways, and they can both contribute to our patterns of addiction. We can become addicted to and dependent upon both of them, developing codependent, needy, obsessive and compulsive dynamics with both. Both drugs and relationships can cause us to take on traits that feel far removed from our true selves. For example, we might find that alcohol or our drug of choice and our romantic relationships both bring out a volatile and abusive side of us that we don’t experience otherwise. We can feel as though we’re acting in ways that we don’t recognize, that we don’t feel are true to who we really are. We can lose ourselves to both of them, losing our sense of self, our identity, our autonomy, and our self-worth. We can feel as though we don’t know who we are, as though we’ve wasted our time, energy and our lives. Both drugs and relationships can be highly unhealthy and destructive for us, and yet we feel as though we can’t let them go.

Believe You’re Worth What You Want 

For many of us, our dependence on both substances and unhealthy relationships is a form of self-sabotage. Consciously we think we want to be happy but subconsciously we’re undermining our chances of being happy by causing ourselves pain in these drastic ways. We’re sabotaging our forward progress, keeping ourselves from healing, and preventing our growth. When we’re in recovery from our addictions and working to heal our mental health issues, we’ll also have to examine why we’ve been perpetuating these toxic relationships. Do we believe we don’t deserve to be treated well? Do we feel inadequate, unworthy and unlovable? Do we believe we don’t deserve to be happy? Are we using both drugs and relationships to cause ourselves pain and suffering because that’s what we feel we deserve? The more we work to heal ourselves, the more we see just how intertwined, interconnected and interrelated our drug addictions and unhealthy, addictive relationships truly are.

At The Guest House Ocala, our experience with addiction and recovery makes us uniquely poised to be able to understand the struggles you’re experiencing. We’re here to help. Call 855-483-7800 today for more information on our treatment programs.