"He is not like other alcoholics/drug addicts." And this is usually followed by something like: "He is a great dad when he is sober and a caring and loving partner and friend... He is not like other alcoholics."
I would like to turn around the whole perspective of that all alcoholics sleep on the park bench and all drug addicts hang around in the backstreets, and that these don't have any good characteristics.
With experience from 10 years of working in the forensic care and meeting hundreds of people with alcohol- and drug-abuse problems I'd like to say that almost everyone (with a few exceptions) are fantastic people when they are sober and clean from drugs. Very nice, sensitive, funny and caring people. And that is people whose problems have become so severe that they were sentenced to prison because of the consequences of alcohol or drugs.
So, what I want to say with all this is that even if you are an alcoholic or drug addict or have such problems you can still have many good qualities and characteristics. Sadly these qualities are destroyed by the alcohol or drug, when the person is under the influence. Sometimes the addict- personality can "remain" even though the person is sober/clean. Or maybe they were characteristics that the person had before they started using, but they might be amplified by the drugs. But they still have the good qualities somewhere.
It's not black or white. A coin always has two sides.
But as a relative we can not decide to whom we want a relationship. Do we want a relationship to one side of the coin we'll get the other side too.
/Carina
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