Help for someone you know

You have probably come to this page because you are concerned about someone in the family or a friend who might be using drugs. We hope we can help.

You’ve probably heard it said before that good information is important when helping someone with a drug problem. You heard right. There is a huge amount of misinformation about drug use – what drugs do to you, what a drug user “looks like”, that people on drugs are drop-outs. So much of this is wrong. There are lots of different reasons why people might start using drugs, and there are also a lot of different drugs (with different effects on the person) that people take, so generalising is not helpful. It might also be helpful to know that using drugs doesn’t automatically mean that someone is dependent on them. Lots of people go through a phase of using drugs and then move on.

In any case, if you are concerned about someone close to you who is using drugs it is undoubtedly causing distress, or maybe anger. There are certain kinds of behaviour that people often react with. It might help you to read this:

Denying – Pretending that the problem isn’t there and ignoring it.
Enabling – Inadvertently supporting the drug use by paying off debts; by tolerating behaviour which most people would find unacceptable; or even by approaching dealers and buying drugs for the person (often hoping that limiting the contact with the dealer will help).
Controlling – Trying to control the person in an attempt to forcing them to stop using.
Apathy - Giving up.

What should you do?

The first thing is to try and learn a bit more about the drug being taken, and to do your best to empathise with the situation of your friend or family member. Depending on the circumstances that might be the last thing you feel like doing, but overreacting or shouting very rarely works.

With the above in mind, there are two areas of this site worth exploring:

How do we talk to people who are using drugs?

If you take a look at our About Us page, you will get the sense of the way we try and approach working with people who are using drugs. Our “drugs, help for you” page is worth looking at too. These might help you to think about how you can approach the matter with your friend or family member for the best.

So how can we help you best?

If you would like to talk, please contact us. You can tell us about the situation and we can try and give you the tools to help you manage the situation.

Sometimes people almost force their family member or friend to our front door. This rarely works. Years of experience have taught us that people only start to make changes when they decide they want to. So by all means encourage them to make contact with us. Let them read information on this site. Give them our contact details.

If they are accepting of it, we can arrange for a “family session”, so that both you and your family member can attend and see one of our staff. Remember though that both you and your family member need to be willing for this to take place!

Help for someone you know

What should you do?

How do we talk to people who are using drugs?

So how can we help you best?

Who are we?

0845 8638323