Tough Love - The Language of Negativity

The language of addiction is laced with many terms that seem to be designed to scare everyone. Many words and descriptors of addiction make me cringe “Hitting bottom”, is a term I have written about before. Another term that I recently been exploring and considering is “Tough Love”.


TOUGH LOVE is harsh. Tough Love is another descriptor that bothers me. For a parent to do what is necessary with an addicted child isn't "tough love" it is REAL LOVE. Real love is letting your child sit in jail (protective custody) when for only a few dollars you could get him out and spare them from the confines of jail. (Only to find them using again with two hours.) Real love is telling your child they cannot live in your home as they continue to use drugs. Real love is seeing your addict hungry, dirty and homeless, buying them a meal and giving them info of people that can help them and encouraging them to seek help and not offering to "fix it" for them. Real love is selfishly taking the time to work on yourself so that when your addict has a "profound experience" you ARE able to help in the right way instead of just falling back into old habits of enabling.

Addiction is a disease. When we see a parent sitting bedside of a child with cancer taking chemotherapy, holding their hand, wiping their head, combing their hair as it falls out, holding the pan as they get sick we admire that parent and comment how much they must love their child to be by their side. That parent doesn’t love their child any more than you or I. That parent is only doing what they can and must to help their child get better; just like we are doing when we practice tough love real love.

Real Love is why you are here reading this post.

Tough love is easy, throw them out and leave them to the world.