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Hope for Those Loving a Substance User
Finding Hope Family Support Groups
Written By
Finding Hope Team
Hope for Those Loving a Substance User
“Behold, I will bring to it health and healing…” Jeremiah 33:6
For a long time, I believed healing applied only to the addict in my life. I prayed for sobriety and change, assuming that if he was healed, everything else would fall into place. What I didn’t yet understand was this: God was just as invested in my healing, too.
God doesn’t offer partial healing. He brings health, peace, and restoration not only to individuals but also to families and wounded hearts.
Understanding Addiction & Codependency
Addiction is an uncontrolled compulsion to continue using a substance or behavior despite negative consequences.
Codependency is an excessive emotional or psychological reliance on another person — often someone struggling with addiction.
I could clearly see addiction in my loved one, but I struggled to see codependency in myself. I thought loving harder, fixing more, and sacrificing myself was faithfulness. Over time, I realized I was losing my peace, my identity, and my emotional health.
Parallel Pain: Two Sides of the Same Struggle
Through experience and research, we’ve learned something powerful: substance abusers and codependents often share the same root pain — expressed through different behaviors.
- Substance abusers look to a substance; codependents look to a person. Both give their power away.
- Substance abusers depend on substances; codependents depend on relationships. Both crave love and acceptance.
- Both avoid hard decisions, neglect self-care, lose identity, and become emotionally exhausted.
- Substance abusers numb pain with substances; codependents numb pain with control, fixing, and self-neglect.
- Different behaviors. Same desperation.
Shared Emotions
Common Feelings Among Loved Ones: guilt, shame, anger, loneliness, anxiety
Common Feelings Among Addicts: guilt, shame, anger, fear, hopelessness
Seeing these parallels doesn’t excuse behavior, but it does create understanding, compassion, and clarity.
“Recovery is an ongoing process, for both the addict and his or her family. In recovery, there is hope.” —Dean Dauphinais
Understanding isn’t about blame — it’s about healing. Your healing matters. God is restoring hearts, identities, and families.
You are not alone — and hope is real.
With hope,
Darcie Stephens, Finding Hope Coordinator
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