For people who love someone struggling with a drug addiction, cutting their loved one off and letting them hit the proverbial “rock bottom” can seem like the only option. But many families have discovered that there seems to be no bottom, and others have found the bottom to be death. Families looking for hope are increasingly turning to research on behavior change and focusing on smaller steps like helping their loved one stay alive and incrementally improve their health. For moms like Jennifer, this shift has been life-changing.
Jennifer first realized her son was struggling with opioid addiction five years ago, when he was 19. They sent him to treatment multiple times, but he always relapsed. He lived through three overdoses, including one that was so close to ending his life that he spent six weeks in the hospital followed by months of physical, occupational, and speech therapy so he could learn to walk, talk, and care for himself again. “I wish I could say that was it for him,” Jennifer told me, “but it wasn’t.” Her son relapsed again.
One in 10 adults in the United States is suffering from a substance use disorder, which means that almost every family is trying to navigate the fear, anger, and sense of helplessness that so often come with it. Addiction is a family experience.
Jennifer did what most parents do when their child is facing a crisis. She looked for anything that could help. In her research, she ran across a term she hadn’t heard before - “natural recovery.” Also called “aging out” and “spontaneous recovery,” she found studies showing that most people who struggle with addiction never go to treatment, and yet the majority will stop their problematic substance use over time anyway, many of them in their 30s. What she read is true.
Changing roles and responsibilities, clarified priorities, and seasons of life are all triggers that lead many people (though certainly not all) to change their relationship with substances as they age.
Jennifer shifted her focus away from immediate abstinence and towards supporting her son in any decisions he made that reduced his risk of death and increased his health rather than the volatile pendulum swings they’d experienced between abstinence and overdose.
This switch is backed by decades of research showing that motivation is fluid, and people don’t have to hit a rock bottom to make healthier choices or improve their lives and relationships. Instead of fighting him over his addiction, Jennifer became her son’s ally in improving his health.
Highlighting natural recovery and the research on incremental change in no way diminishes the potential harm of substance use. But it can help society approach people who are struggling with addiction more effectively. The goal shouldn't be to force everyone into treatment. Treatment can be helpful for some people, but the majority of people won't even finish the program, and many of the ones who do will relapse. If they’ve been abstinent in treatment, they are at far higher risk of death if they relapse because of their reduced tolerance.
Today, Jennifer has a good relationship with her son, and he’s able to participate in family events, the two biggest gifts of this new approach. He has stopped using opioids and nicotine and no longer buys drugs from the underground market. He still uses cannabis that he qualifies for medically and buys legally, but he doesn’t use it around his family. Jennifer used to consider this unacceptable but given where he was and where he is now, she sees it as a monumental win.
The most surprising part of his transformation, Jennifer says, is that “This last year and a half of ‘California sober’ began without a trip to treatment or weekly meetings but just with his own choices to be healthier and stay alive.” It didn’t start with a rock bottom moment, just a small choice that led to another one, with his family supporting every small step.
Jennifer still wants her son to give up cannabis, but, she says, “We have learned to accept that abstinence for him may be a long process, if ever, and we patiently support all work towards creating other tools of dealing with the emotional regulation in his daily life.” They would rather have a son who is alive, stable, and not abstinent than one who is in chaotic addiction or dead. That latter possibility is still the heartbreaking ending that 100,000 families in the U.S. face every year.
Jennifer’s story is still in progress. There’s no guarantee of a particular outcome with her son. There never is. But as the journey continues, they live with a lot less fear and anger, and a lot more hope and connection.
Christina Dent is Founder of the nonprofit End It For Good, author of the award-winning book Curious, and lifelong Mississippian. If you’re interested in more tools for families walking through substance use disorder, you can reach her at christina@enditforgood.com.
