The Grip We Refuse to Understand

The Grip We Refuse to Understand

A mother once questioned whether it would be easier if her son had cancer instead of a substance use disorder (SUD).

As the words came out of her mouth, she realized, with embarrassment, what she had just said. She was pondering the thought, and I understood why. With cancer, people bring casseroles. They send cards. They ask how you're holding up and mean it. They run errands for you. They pray with you and for you. With addiction, people seem to be embarrassed for you. They lower their voices when they speak about it. They ask how you are, but don't know what to do with an honest answer.

We do not understand addiction as a society — not the everyday, non-medical person. We understand it the way we understand a foreign language we took in high school or the way it was depicted in a movie. We recognize what it looks like, but we don't want to "step in the mud." When understanding is lacking, judgment moves in.

"Why Don't They Just Stop?"

This is the question underneath almost every conversation about addiction, even when no one says it out loud. It's there in the sideways glances, the raised eyebrows, the unsolicited advice, the assumption that if the person just wanted it enough, they'd choose differently.

By the time addiction takes hold, something in the brain has changed. The part responsible for judgment and impulse control — the part that would normally step in and say "don't" — isn't doing its job anymore. It's not that the person doesn't know better, or want better. It's that the part of them that would normally stop is whispering in a very loud room.

I'm not a neuroscientist, but I know that repeated substance use physically changes how the brain processes reward, stress, and motivation. This piece of information seems to make sense for a lot of families and increases their understanding of what their loved one is going through.

Let me be clear: explaining how the brain works with addiction does not make the pain and agony of living through the real-life experience any easier. It doesn't negate the fact that they stole from you, wrecked your car, got physical, or ruined a holiday. The only thing it does is change the question from "why won't they just quit" to "what are they fighting inside that makes quitting feel so impossible?"

The Examples We Don't Talk About

Picture parents who get in the car at 2am and drive 45 minutes to their child's friend's house, because their child hasn't answered a call or a text in two days. They've already called the hospitals. Already searched for the latest arrests online. Already called every friend whose number they still have. It's the middle of the night, and they don't care who they wake up as they bang on windows and doors, because sleep is not the emergency — silence is. They've never prayed harder for their child to be angry with them. Anger, at least, would mean their child is alive to feel it.

Picture a teenager who swore that she was done. She meant it with her whole heart. Three days later, she used again — and the guilt and shame of that relapse were crushing. She couldn't reconcile how much she wanted to stop with how unable she was to do so.

Picture the sister who stopped answering her brother's calls, not because she stopped loving him, but because loving him had started to come at the cost of her own mental health. She looks online for new arrests. She checks his social media every night before bed. She needs to see those posts because that means he's alive. She stares intently at people living on the street, seeing if they are her brother. She still flinches at unknown phone numbers. Choosing distance is painful and scary too, just in a different way.

What Kindness Actually Requires

Kindness doesn't mean pretending the damage isn't real. Addiction breaks trust, families, and hearts in ways that occasionally don't mend. Showing compassion for the person struggling doesn't erase the harm caused.

What kindness does mean is choosing to see the whole picture. Kindness also means understanding that we will never have all the facts, so we will, in this moment, choose to be kind. It means understanding that the parent who sets boundaries and the parent who bails their kid out again and again are doing their best with an impossible situation. Judgment has never once cured an addiction, but connection has been the first step in a lot of recoveries.

It means we stop asking families to justify their pain or explain the situation before we're willing to offer them support.

We Don't Have to Fully Understand to Be Kind

I hope you will never fully grasp what it feels like to need something so badly it costs you almost everything. Maybe you'll never fully grasp what it feels like to watch someone you love disappear: grow alarmingly thin, talk to themselves, connect with dangerous people, become dangerous themselves. We do not need to understand to have compassion.

What's required is a shift. Soften the question. Rather than asking "why can't they just stop?", change it to "how can I support you as you walk through this; how can I help you and the people who love you?"

If this is your reality, please know you do not have to carry it alone. Guilt, exhaustion, isolation, and fear are way too heavy for one person to shoulder. Get some support for yourself. We are always here to help.

📞 469-722-3168 🌐 www.kerbykonnects.com

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Colossians 3:12