How to Change When Helping Hurts: Lessons from My Codependent Crisis

The incident that landed me in a 12-step recovery was that I hit a codependent bottom. It happened as a result of inviting my homeless friend Dan from church to stay overnight at my home during a really heavy snowstorm in January 2015. He accepted my invitation, of course. Then he stayed another time and another time, and within a few weeks, he was practically living with me.

He was an admitted addict and an alcoholic. Now I think it’s possible he also had some kind of personality disorder. This guy messed with my head in a way I’d never experienced. He made me question my reality, and my motives and generally wreaked havoc on my life. And yet I continued to allow him to say.

One time he was super high on this stuff that was going around in New Haven at the time. It was called K2 and it was almost like PCP in its effects. The high made the person have super unpredictable behavior and be really “out there.” During one of these highs, he was stumbling around my apartment and just wrecking the place. I was really scared. My nervous system lit up just by writing that.

I had no idea what to do so I took out my phone to video record him. My brilliant idea was that if I showed it to him when he was sober, he’d “see the error of his ways” and stop getting high. I thought I could…