What Happened When Nobody Rescued Me

I was homeless for two years before I got sober.

My parents had changed the locks on their house because when they went on trips. I’d let myself in, drink and use, go through their things, eat everything in the refrigerator, and leave the place trashed. Eventually I was asking friends who no longer trusted me to let me sleep in their garages. Some of them said no. One person took me in, got tired of it, and kicked me out.

That was when I got desperate enough to get sober. That was when the people who loved me were actually able to help.

I think about that when I’m tempted to rescue someone from the consequences of their own choices. My parents didn’t give me money. They didn’t make my phone calls or pay my overdue bills. They changed the locks. It felt cruel at the time. From where I stand now, it was the most loving thing they could have done — because it cleared the path to the bottom I needed to hit.

There’s a section of Chapter 5 I call “manufactured crises” — the endless stream of emergencies that aren’t really emergencies, the poor planning that lands in your lap as though it were your problem to solve. My dad had a four-word answer for those: “Gee, that’s too bad.”

He never went to Al-Anon as far as I know. But he figured out something that took me years of meetings to learn. Not every crisis is yours to manage. The more you rescue, the more emergencies you’ll face. Their poor planning is not your emergency.

Their consequences are their teachers, not your failures.

When I finally stopped being rescued, I learned how to pay bills. I learned how to stay sober. I learned how to live. None of that would have happened if someone had kept stepping in.

I’m not saying withhold love. I’m saying that sometimes the most loving thing you can do is let the consequences land where they were always supposed to.

Dave H. has been in recovery since 1995 and in Al-Anon since 2011. His book, The Practice of Imperfection: Finding and Keeping Serenity, is for family members who are tired of losing their peace to someone else’s disease.