Every time I get up and talk about my past or post about it on Facebook, I am approached by people who are either ex addicts like I am or who have loved ones in the throes of addiction. The ex addicts who approach me will give me a conspiratorial nudge, nod of the head, or “Keep it up.” (We say a lot more to each other when we’re not in public.) The people who have loved ones in addiction will either talk a lot about what the experience has been like for them — their frustration, disappointment, et cetera — or they’ll ask for my help. “Would you talk to him?” “Can I give her your number?”

I always say yes, but if you want to know the truth, when I imagine what those conversations might be like, I never have a clue what I’d say, and that’s because I don’t have any answers to the question Can I/he/she/they be helped?

Well, I do have two answers, but they may not feel very satisfying: yes and I don’t know.

Yes!

First, the yes, because that’s making us all feel hopeful.

Yes, you can help an addict whether she wants it or not: You can pray. In fact, it is the single most important thing you will ever do for her. And you can pray in at least two directions: 1) that your own faith and trust in God will increase, and 2) that the addict will come to the end of herself by any means necessary.

You need to trust God.

This direction of prayer will directly inform the second and is fundamental to the health of your relationship with your addicted loved one. If you do not trust God to take care of you, your family, your addict, and everything else, you will try to control it all yourself, and in the process you will drive your addict further away and you will drive everyone else loco. You are probably already doing this, because trusting God is hard and contrary to your nature. If you are, you need to repent and ask God for the grace to trust him.

The addict needs to come to the end of herself.

The natural outflowing of your trust in God in this situation will be a prayer that God will do whatever he sees fit to bring your loved one to himself, which means bringing her to the end ofherself. This is incredibly difficult, because some addicts can put up with an awful lot of shit before they hit rock bottom, and depending on your relationship to the addicted, you may have to see it all. It is also difficult because some of the stuff that will happen to them will make it seem as though God is not good. But he is good, and you must believe that especially in such times, because if you don’t, you’ll step in and “save” your addict at precisely the moment she needs to be feeling all of the pain/grief/shame/consequences in order to reach the end of her rope.

I don’t know.

Now to the second answer. Other than pray, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know if he can be helped. There are two reasons for this: first, every problem is different and therefore requires different treatment; but second — and more to the point — the way I both made it out and continue to make it out is by the grace of God, which cannot be manipulated.

Different problems have different solutions.

I don’t know what specific problems your addict is facing, but they are more than likely different from what I faced (and still face). That’s why I feel so up a creek when people ask me to talk with someone. Statistically, it is likely your addict was sexually abused at some time in his past, and that is something you should look in to (therapy, I mean).

As to what else is going on, we do also know that the problems your addicted loved one is facing are both true of all humanity and specific to him and him alone. That is, what he is struggling with is sin, which is what we are all struggling with, and yet the particulars of that sin have wounded and twisted him in particular ways which will require particular healing. Good news! God is the Great Physician.

You must also recognize your propensity to hear others’ success stories and believe (irrationally) it will happen exactly that way for your loved one and therefore try and force your addict into a mold which doesn’t fit him. (I do this a lot with others’ stories about how they met their significant others.) God knows what he’s doing. Let him do it.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, you must be constantly asking the Lord what it is he would have you do (or not do!) for your addict. Does he want you to keep supporting him? Does he want you to cut off all contact? (Probably not, but it shouldn’t be ruled out.) What boundaries does he want you to establish? If you act outside of heavenly wisdom and try to do what you think will help, you will seriously inhibit progress.

God will not be manipulated.

If you are an addict or know one, you’ll see the problem immediately: addicts are constantly manipulating everything (and some of us ex addicts are still at it). The addict must reach a point at which the thought I can’t do this if you (God) won’t help me becomes true for him. He may know he needs to say it, but saying it without believing it is manipulation, and God sees right through it.

Or, if you like, manipulation stems from an inordinate desire for control which stems from the belief that were things in our control, things would be better. Therefore, manipulation is, at its root, pride, and God will have no dealings with the proud.

There are all sorts of ways in which manipulation can masquerade as humility. My parents know this better than most because of all the times I put on the humble mask in an effort to get their guards down so that I could steal more money. After a time, my parents stopped believing my “humility” and then I, in the insanity of addiction, would complain that I would never be able to really change if all they expected from me was more of the same. Which was, of course, pure, unadulterated manipulation.

The end of the matter is grace.

And that’s why I say I just don’t know. I don’t know why I got to a place where I could genuinely say to God that I couldn’t make it without him and why others don’t. I can tell you all day long how thankful I am for God’s grace in my life, and you may rejoice with me for a time, but if your addicted love one hasn’t had my experience, you could very well walk away feeling cheated.

The only proverbial straw at which I can desperately grasp is to tell you to take that feeling to God. Take all of your questions to him. As Stan Gaede, erstwhile president of Westmont College, once said, “God would rather have honest questions borne of faith than pious words and deeds borne of conceit. God can handle your struggles. He can even handle your questions, though like Job you may have to brace yourself when you hear his response. What he can’t abide, however– what he can’t abide is our hypocrisy, our pretensions to be godly when we are not.”