Author: hatmaker510
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2011 6:37 am
Some people just get stuck in the "shame" of addiction and can’t get past it. I remember a person on this forum who was like that. Just couldn’t seem to get past it. I have no idea what active addiction did to your friend’s life – how badly it was for his friends and family – the lying, cheating, stealing, did he lose people in his life, jobs, what did it cost him? Sometimes the worse it is can correlate with feelings of shame. It’s really hard to get someone out of that place. For me, I finally learned that the holding on to the shame is the same as living in the past. When I realized that, I quickly moved to the current and out of the past. But different people require different things to light a fire under their ass.
Maybe you can talk to him about shame. Try discussing it in relation to another person, and maybe not him, because it sounds like he wouldn’t admit it. Do you know any other addicts? Could you bring up the subject of shame nonchalantly? Maybe with him it’s about the shame….Just a thought.
Good luck to you.
