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Addict in the House: A No-Nonsense Family Guide Through Addiction and Recovery
"This is a straightforward, rich resource for anyone who lives with, and loves, an addict."
— Publishers Weekly
Everyone suffers when there’s an addict in the family. Written by an expert in alcohol and drug addiction and recovery, this no-nonsense guide will help you understand the causes of addiction, end enabling behaviors, support your loved one’s recovery, and learn how to cope with relapses. If you’re the family member of an addict, you may feel confused, guilty, and scared of doing the wrong thing. And when you don’t know how to help, you may find yourself in a codependent role, trying so hard to keep your addicted loved one alive, out of jail, or emotionally appeased that you may actually prevent them from realizing they need help. Drawing on her own personal experience with her brother’s addiction, Addict in the House offers a pragmatic, step-by-step guide to dealing with a loved one’s addiction, from accepting the reality of the disease to surviving what may be repeated cycles of recovery and relapse. You’ll learn how to encourage your addicted loved one to get help without forcing it, and finally find the strength to let go of codependence. With this revealing and straightforward book, you’ll have the support you need to take an honest look at how addiction has affected the family, cope with the emotional hurdles of having an addicted family member, create and maintain firm boundaries, and make informed decisions about how to best help your loved one.
— Publishers Weekly
Everyone suffers when there’s an addict in the family. Written by an expert in alcohol and drug addiction and recovery, this no-nonsense guide will help you understand the causes of addiction, end enabling behaviors, support your loved one’s recovery, and learn how to cope with relapses. If you’re the family member of an addict, you may feel confused, guilty, and scared of doing the wrong thing. And when you don’t know how to help, you may find yourself in a codependent role, trying so hard to keep your addicted loved one alive, out of jail, or emotionally appeased that you may actually prevent them from realizing they need help. Drawing on her own personal experience with her brother’s addiction, Addict in the House offers a pragmatic, step-by-step guide to dealing with a loved one’s addiction, from accepting the reality of the disease to surviving what may be repeated cycles of recovery and relapse. You’ll learn how to encourage your addicted loved one to get help without forcing it, and finally find the strength to let go of codependence. With this revealing and straightforward book, you’ll have the support you need to take an honest look at how addiction has affected the family, cope with the emotional hurdles of having an addicted family member, create and maintain firm boundaries, and make informed decisions about how to best help your loved one.
208 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2016
457 people are currently reading
459 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
August 16, 2017
Where was this book 3 years ago when my son started the more severe spiral? I've now reached the point of "mourning the living" while trying to restart my own healthy mind & dig out of the financial hole I blind loving allowed myself to dig.
March 24, 2022
Very helpful, straightforward guide for family members of addicts.
January 13, 2025
Not what I was looking for. This is entry-level literature regarding addiction, which would have been helpful for me to read ~20 years ago.
July 2, 2016
This was a great book. I’m pleasantly surprise by it. I was attracted to it from the description, which make a very good job explaining what the book is about. It was very straightforward and the concepts shared by it, are very helpful to begin to understand what an addiction is about, and how a family member can help recovery.
It is very well structured. It was easy to understand how it was organized. It used a simple language and a lot of examples, making it easy to understand the concepts described. One of the things that made me doubt about reading it was that I didn’t knew the contents before choosing it, but I take a leap of faith, because a book addressing this matter, deserved it. Now that I read it, I’m very glad I had this opportunity.
The contents are diverse. It had a nice approach on the concept of addiction and how to understand it. It gives very important tools about how to communicate, which I think it was one of the strongest parts of the book. There are also some exercises, which I don’t like to do, but I think they can be very useful to most readers.
One of the chapters that drag most of my attention was the one about teenage addicts. It was great to see someone is taking time to acknowledge this issue, and most important, to try to give the parents some orientation on what to do and what not to do.
Overall I think it was a great book, and a very important one to people dealing with addicts in their family. But I wouldn’t recommend it only to that group of readers, I think it might be a good book to read for anyone who is willing to give help to a person, not necessary family member, dealing with an addition. I also think it might be useful to people who work in a medical environment and don’t know how to manage this issues, this book can work as a very good guide.
**Book provided by NetGalley.
It is very well structured. It was easy to understand how it was organized. It used a simple language and a lot of examples, making it easy to understand the concepts described. One of the things that made me doubt about reading it was that I didn’t knew the contents before choosing it, but I take a leap of faith, because a book addressing this matter, deserved it. Now that I read it, I’m very glad I had this opportunity.
The contents are diverse. It had a nice approach on the concept of addiction and how to understand it. It gives very important tools about how to communicate, which I think it was one of the strongest parts of the book. There are also some exercises, which I don’t like to do, but I think they can be very useful to most readers.
One of the chapters that drag most of my attention was the one about teenage addicts. It was great to see someone is taking time to acknowledge this issue, and most important, to try to give the parents some orientation on what to do and what not to do.
Overall I think it was a great book, and a very important one to people dealing with addicts in their family. But I wouldn’t recommend it only to that group of readers, I think it might be a good book to read for anyone who is willing to give help to a person, not necessary family member, dealing with an addition. I also think it might be useful to people who work in a medical environment and don’t know how to manage this issues, this book can work as a very good guide.
**Book provided by NetGalley.
August 10, 2017
I didn't find this particularly full of epiphanies, but then I've been a family member of addicts for an awfully long time. I picked this up due to a particularly difficult recent situation to see if there was anything helpful or enlightening, and while there wasn't, I really didn't expect there to be.
It was a good solid book, though, and if I were newly on this particular journey I'd have found it very helpful.
It reaffirmed what I already knew, and did give me some perspectives and things to try.
I'm glad this little book is out there helping.
It was a good solid book, though, and if I were newly on this particular journey I'd have found it very helpful.
It reaffirmed what I already knew, and did give me some perspectives and things to try.
I'm glad this little book is out there helping.
August 12, 2018
The best book on addiction I've read in 5 years of reading about the subject. Straightforward, clear, positive, empowering , realistic and honest. I especially appreciated the exercises for reflection.
October 12, 2020
A very informative and simple read. The book provides a better understanding of any family faced with addition from their past or in present time. Would highly recommend this book whether personally suffering with addition or are just interested in the illness.
April 13, 2022
This really is a no-nonsense book. I appreciate that it gets straight to the point. I could relate to the author's experience, which was a relief, as addiction makes families feel so alone. I will refer to this book often.
January 23, 2017
Easy to read with lots of practical ideas for families with an addict. Not a fix all book, however a good start.
September 2, 2016
Addict in the house - A No-Nonsense Family Guide Through Addiction and Recovery - by Robin Barnett is a book where you will find sufferance and all that elements characterizing the world of addiction. The author, strong of her personal experience, will tell you how to cope with your beloved addict relative and how to cure him successfully. Published by New Harbinger Publications you can find the book on stores now.
The book opens with some considerations of Robin and his personal story. Later the discovery of who and why someone beloved became an addicted.
As Barnett explains sometimes it's a mental illness, depression, bipolarity a situation of border line, personality able to give the pretest for the use and abuse of drugs and alcohol. Surely, the author remarks there is a biological component, including of course environment, chronic illness and pain.
What to do for someone with an addict at home?
Robin suggests to separate psychologically the addict from the addiction and the substance that changed our beloved person so badly.
For a non-addict it's tremendously difficult to imagine the world and the situation lived by the addict. An addict for buying drug and alcohol can lie, can steal.
The author is clear: a lack of substance in the body of an addict is like lack of food in a body of a normal person. You would start to be nervous, you would search desperately for food. Same is for the addict and the substance able to calm down his nerves. There are various typologies of addicts.
One of them are the functional addicts. People who think that their life, because they continue to work, and they're productive is normal. Keeping up appearances can be, says the author, another signal and symptom of the disease.
An addict will tend to focus on what is being done to them and not by them.
An addict can experience broken relationships, financial problems, legal troubles, consequences of his addiction.
Problem is, affirms the author that there are two people in an addict and inside an addict: they know the damage alcohol or drug cause to them but they can't stop it.
What a relative and a friend of an addict should do?
Fight the addiction not the addict, and this one is a first and important, crucial separation indispensable for winning these horrible substances. Problem is, says Robin that more a person love an addict, more will protect him and his addiction.
Manipulation is something very well known from addicts with people of their family and with friends for keeping cheerful the addiction. There are people who will feed this addiction as well. Maybe people with which this man, the addict one will drink together at the bar. These ones won't want to interrupt the addiction of the man in particular if he offers wine generously to them, not addicted.
All the family members will play also a role in this addiction game.
It will be important for the members of the family to build a better relationship and change the way they communicate with the addict.
Addicts can't control their behaviors.
A dangerous myth says the author is that only the addict can save himself from his addiction.
In part it is true but a big role can be played also by people around him.
Where grows up addiction? Are there best places for nurturing and developing it?
Of course: in an environment populated by shame, secrets and shadows. In the light of sun an addiction wouldn't live a long life.
Relatives of the addict shouldn't tell him of stopping to drink everything.
It's important to play a good and solid psychological role when we are in their company.
It is also important to choose the best words to say at an addict.
An advice from the author: the silence must be broken and later ask for advices. Very good advices, from doctors, psychologists, etc.
Let's remember says the author that an addiction is a progressive disease, mental and physical.
And be careful says the author when an addict ask for help. Being liars they can have a double face.
And then the author treats the detoxification from alcohol, etc.
This one the step more hated by the addict for the sad collateral effects.
Sure the collateral effects of the abstinence are many: palpitations, nausea, insomnia etc.
The detoxification of an alcoholist is always risky because of the so-called seizures, delirium tremens. Benzodiazepines (the Zanax a lot of people use largely) could give at first seizures once interrupted abruptly like also barbiturate.
Opiates in comparisons are less dangerous in the phase of the detox.
Then the author treats the chapter of the structures that can cure your loved one very well.
A good structure where he can remains for a long time followed by excellent people is the best option. The so-called rehab can't do anything in the short time according to the author.
Addiction grow up in places of silence and secrecy creating shame, guilt and often misunderstanding.
Break this chain and set yourself and your dear one free again! from this horrible pain and sufferance.
The author suggests to keep a journal for your peace of mind and for reminding you that when you will start to want to change the situation for your loved one, you can do that.
I suggest this book to everyone with a big cross like the one of an addict in a house for better understanding the modality of approach with the sick person and for trying to save him/her from the abyss in which he/she fell for a reason or another.
Good Luck!
I thank Netgalley for this informative book.
The book opens with some considerations of Robin and his personal story. Later the discovery of who and why someone beloved became an addicted.
As Barnett explains sometimes it's a mental illness, depression, bipolarity a situation of border line, personality able to give the pretest for the use and abuse of drugs and alcohol. Surely, the author remarks there is a biological component, including of course environment, chronic illness and pain.
What to do for someone with an addict at home?
Robin suggests to separate psychologically the addict from the addiction and the substance that changed our beloved person so badly.
For a non-addict it's tremendously difficult to imagine the world and the situation lived by the addict. An addict for buying drug and alcohol can lie, can steal.
The author is clear: a lack of substance in the body of an addict is like lack of food in a body of a normal person. You would start to be nervous, you would search desperately for food. Same is for the addict and the substance able to calm down his nerves. There are various typologies of addicts.
One of them are the functional addicts. People who think that their life, because they continue to work, and they're productive is normal. Keeping up appearances can be, says the author, another signal and symptom of the disease.
An addict will tend to focus on what is being done to them and not by them.
An addict can experience broken relationships, financial problems, legal troubles, consequences of his addiction.
Problem is, affirms the author that there are two people in an addict and inside an addict: they know the damage alcohol or drug cause to them but they can't stop it.
What a relative and a friend of an addict should do?
Fight the addiction not the addict, and this one is a first and important, crucial separation indispensable for winning these horrible substances. Problem is, says Robin that more a person love an addict, more will protect him and his addiction.
Manipulation is something very well known from addicts with people of their family and with friends for keeping cheerful the addiction. There are people who will feed this addiction as well. Maybe people with which this man, the addict one will drink together at the bar. These ones won't want to interrupt the addiction of the man in particular if he offers wine generously to them, not addicted.
All the family members will play also a role in this addiction game.
It will be important for the members of the family to build a better relationship and change the way they communicate with the addict.
Addicts can't control their behaviors.
A dangerous myth says the author is that only the addict can save himself from his addiction.
In part it is true but a big role can be played also by people around him.
Where grows up addiction? Are there best places for nurturing and developing it?
Of course: in an environment populated by shame, secrets and shadows. In the light of sun an addiction wouldn't live a long life.
Relatives of the addict shouldn't tell him of stopping to drink everything.
It's important to play a good and solid psychological role when we are in their company.
It is also important to choose the best words to say at an addict.
An advice from the author: the silence must be broken and later ask for advices. Very good advices, from doctors, psychologists, etc.
Let's remember says the author that an addiction is a progressive disease, mental and physical.
And be careful says the author when an addict ask for help. Being liars they can have a double face.
And then the author treats the detoxification from alcohol, etc.
This one the step more hated by the addict for the sad collateral effects.
Sure the collateral effects of the abstinence are many: palpitations, nausea, insomnia etc.
The detoxification of an alcoholist is always risky because of the so-called seizures, delirium tremens. Benzodiazepines (the Zanax a lot of people use largely) could give at first seizures once interrupted abruptly like also barbiturate.
Opiates in comparisons are less dangerous in the phase of the detox.
Then the author treats the chapter of the structures that can cure your loved one very well.
A good structure where he can remains for a long time followed by excellent people is the best option. The so-called rehab can't do anything in the short time according to the author.
Addiction grow up in places of silence and secrecy creating shame, guilt and often misunderstanding.
Break this chain and set yourself and your dear one free again! from this horrible pain and sufferance.
The author suggests to keep a journal for your peace of mind and for reminding you that when you will start to want to change the situation for your loved one, you can do that.
I suggest this book to everyone with a big cross like the one of an addict in a house for better understanding the modality of approach with the sick person and for trying to save him/her from the abyss in which he/she fell for a reason or another.
Good Luck!
I thank Netgalley for this informative book.
November 9, 2020
Good information about the addiction itself, relating your own story/situation and helpful information on how to try to get your loved one to stop. The setting boundaries information was very relevant and helpful. Although, I was looking for something along the lines of an addict that is totally resistant to change and helping themselves, and how to look after myself whilst loving an addict. Some helpful reading about this, but more along the lines that they will hopefully get/accept/and receive the help they need. Although, I do remain hopeful.
July 9, 2022
This book literally is changing my life. I have an alcoholic spouse and we are at a critical point in the relationship. This book helped educate me on addiction and how to live with an addict. The exercises in it are intense but immensely impactful. I recommend this to anyone who loves and addict or is struggling with addiction. I feel more equipped to navigate my life now. Cannot recommend this strongly enough!
September 22, 2017
This straight forward guide to dealing with facets of addiction is invaluable. Sections in communication, explaining different programs and how to foster a loving relationship with firm boundaries were excellent.
December 6, 2020
This book was helpful in examining dynamics in my household and family and ultimately led me to seek out Al Anon for help. Practical advice about the irrationality of addiction and its devastating impact on relationships and families.
April 5, 2021
Audio Version - This was honestly very good. Very easy to skip through portions that do not pertain to you and your situation. Great advice, very honest and informative. Great for the newbie to having a loved one with an addiction and also for someone who has some experience. Highly recommended.
August 9, 2017
Another informative book or a sad topic
December 31, 2017
This book is awesome. As I was reading the book, it was as if I as the one writing the book.
March 30, 2018
Very informative and currently applicable.
August 20, 2018
Highly recommended for anyone struggling with a loved one with a substance use disorder. Easy to digest, offers practical guidelines and advice.
October 1, 2019
My first time reading material on serious topics like this. Its a great and very informative read. I highly recommend with anyone dealing with friends or family who are battling alcoholism.
February 24, 2020
If you have a friend or family member struggling with an addiction, this book is practical and helpful.
August 2, 2020
Agree help to navigate There tangled chaos
October 9, 2021
Excellent read and so very helpful. I gained great insight into myself and my addicted loved one
May 19, 2023
I listened to this on audiobook but will be buying a physical copy to have to refer back to as needed. It was very to the point but helpful.
July 28, 2024
excellent
Taught me many things throughout this journey that I can use. Many great resources too. Book came recommended to me by my sons therapist and I recommend it to you.
Taught me many things throughout this journey that I can use. Many great resources too. Book came recommended to me by my sons therapist and I recommend it to you.
February 27, 2025
This was one of my fave books on addiction. One of the most useful things i read in here and ever - is when your arguing try to remember you are arguing eith the addict not your loved one.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews