butterflyuk

What do you do when you see someone trying touch a burning flame? Someone standing in a middle of a busy motorway, someone standing on the edge of a cliff or someone drinking senseless day in and day out. You can explain to a child the danger of burning if a flame is touched. You can tell a tribal man who is not used to automobile the dangers of a motorway, you can reason with a suicidal man standing on a cliff but you cannot do anything when someone drinks more and more each day if that person has no logic, no control, no motivation.

You can get very angry. You can be gentle and make them see how it is killing them. You can bribe. You can threaten. You can frighten them. You can advise. You can cajole. You can blackmail. You can cry. If nothing makes any difference then you despair.

It is like watching someone dying a slow, painful death - like a terminal cancer. You watch and feel insanely sad and helpless. It is not any good saying well they can't be compared with a dreadful illness like cancer. You cannot say that these people are weak and can help themselves. You cannot say they deserve it because they are doing it to themselves.

Some people cannot help themselves. It is not as simple as it sounds. Some addicts have other underlying problems that make them more prone to addiction then other "normal" people. All of us have weaknesses - of some kind or the other. Some weaknesses are not so obvious. Just as the addict cannot give up the addiction, you cannot give up trying to help them.

Is loving someone a strength or a weakness? Is trying to do the right thing at all cost a strength or a weakness? Isn't love an addiction? It makes you high when you are new to it. You need more when you get used to it. You get withdrawal symptoms, depression, when it is not reciprocated. You cannot function without it. Love takes over all your senses. Although that is one addiction I will not help anyone to cure.