Who Loves Someone With Addiction?

Dr. S introduces a 3–4 episode series sparked by a conversation with Charlie Engle, focusing not on demonizing “the addict” but on what happens to those who love someone with addiction. She describes how a partner, parent, or friend can become a rescuer/fixer whose life reorganizes around monitoring, preventing crises, and managing the other person’s mood, creating a shared nervous-system dynamic marked by hypervigilance and chronic stress. She links this to health costs (sleep, immune, metabolic dysregulation), coping/bypassing behaviors, and the impact on children’s modeling of love and boundaries. Framing codependency as safety becoming tied to regulating another’s behavior, she argues rescuing can become an “invisible addiction” and emphasizes that recovery belongs to the individual. The episode sets up the next question: why people stay in these patterns so long.00:00 Series Purpose04:12 Three Big Questions06:59 Loving Someone Addicted10:06 Addiction Takes Many Forms11:21 The Rescuer Role16:02 Hidden Health Costs19:48 Kids and Modeling20:51 Codependency Reframed23:03 Why We Get Pulled In24:57 Why We Stay So Long26:35 Wrap Up and Next EpisodeConnect with Dr Safia DebarDr Safia DebarSpeaker / Coach | Medical Doctor | Breathwork Facilitator One of Tatler's "Top 21 private doctors in Britain" [email protected]: @drsafiadebarTiktok: drsafiadebarFind our free resources here: www.drsafiadebar.com/resource