What If My Child Isn’t Motivated to Get Treatment for Addiction?
Suggesting Treatment to a Loved One
Intervention – a Starting Point
Drug Use, Stigma, and the Proactive Contagions to Reduce Both
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For years, Paddy Ryder’s addictions did not begin with a single catastrophic choice. They grew through a thousand smaller decisions: the drink after the game, the binge rationalised as “normal”, the belief he could still function, and the conviction that help was for someone else.
His story is not simply about alcohol, gambling and cocaine. It is about the reasoning that lets destructive behaviour feel justified—until the costs become impossible to ignore. And it is about an exit that was not found in willpower alone, but in surrender, faith, community and a new understanding of what life is for.
The excuses sounded reasonable
Ryder entered elite football young: drafted at 17, leaving Geraldton for Melbourne as a highly rated No. 7 pick. He wanted to fit in, avoid doing the wrong thing and belong in a world that placed huge expectations on him. But the desire to conform gradually became a permission slip.
“When things got tough,” he said, alcohol became his go-to. Did you get that all too common response – the dominant culture of masking or erasing stress dictated responses; Not reflection, not support and definitely not honest conversation in a macho ‘footy’ context.
The logic was deceptively simple:
- It was only after games.
- Friday-night games meant there was no need to return to the club until Monday.
- Nobody was breathalysing players at beach recovery.
- He could get through on very little sleep.
- He was still playing good football.
That is the anatomy of addiction’s early reasoning: defining the problem so narrowly that it is never allowed to count as a problem. If the drinking happened after football, it could be quarantined from football. If he could still train, compete and perform, the damage could be dismissed; and this is a big one. This writer has met with a number of high-profile professional under 18 coaches back when Ryder was on, and too many of them cared little for the psycho-social wellbeing of players if it did not impact their on field performance. Consequently, if others did not intervene, the behaviour could be treated as acceptable.
But being able to function is not the same as being well, and not being caught is not the same as being free and therein lies the canard that hedonist culture cultivates.
Ryder’s drinking escalated into heavy binges—more than 15 spirits in a night, often drunk almost straight by the end. The hangovers, the exhaustion and the emotional cost became normalised.
What should have been warning signs became part of the routine.
Pain became permission
Ryder experienced real pain. The Essendon supplements scandal, public scrutiny, anxiety surrounding his unborn child, a 12-month playing ban, depression, professional disappointment and family strain were not imaginary wounds and these quickly become the catalyst for self-medication with a substance comfortable operator.
However, this real pain can become dangerous when it is used as a defence for choices that deepened the wounds.
After the 2016 suspension, football—the structure around which Ryder had organised much of his identity—was abruptly removed. He described falling into severe depression and drinking whenever he felt like it. He eventually spent a month in a mental-health facility near Wollongong, taking antidepressants and confronting the seriousness of his emotional state.
That period mattered, because it showed he could seek help and rebuild. With intensive training and support, Ryder returned in 2017 to have one of the strongest seasons of his career, winning Port Adelaide’s best-and-fairest and All-Australian honours.
Yet recovery from crisis is not the same as recovery from the thinking that fuelled the crisis.
When the immediate pain eased, complacency returned. When Port Adelaide moved him on in 2019, he carried the hurt. When relocation to St Kilda strained his marriage, when COVID disrupted ordinary routines, and when separation left him isolated from his family, the old response reappeared: numb it, avoid it, outrun it.
This was not just bad luck – it was a pattern.
“I could still manage it.”
The most revealing part of Ryder’s account is his honesty about the moment he crossed from being a troubled drinker into someone actively pursuing harder drugs.
“No one gave it to me,” he said of cocaine. “I was able to sort out people myself and source it.”
That statement removes the comforting fiction that destructive choices always arrive through external pressure. Ryder does not blame a bad crowd, a teammate or a club. He acknowledges agency; he made calls, he found suppliers and he chose the next step.
His reasoning was still built around avoidance of consequences. He took drugs after games, so he did not fear testing positive. He did not dwell on what it was doing to his relationships, mental health or future because, as he put it, “these are all consequences, you don’t think about it.”
That is perhaps the most frightening logic in addiction and maybe the truest indicator of it: not necessarily believing there will be no consequences but refusing to let them become emotionally real.
The marriage had broken down. His children were interstate and his AFL career was ending. His use of alcohol and drugs intensified. He later said he contemplated suicide “lots,” stopped by thoughts of his children.
By then, the substances were no longer an escape from pain, they were helping create the pain from which he was trying to escape.
The exit was surrender
Ryder’s eventual turning point was not a glamorous comeback montage or slick curated headlines, by bad actors trying to minimise the catastrophe that is substance use, as we saw so utterly manifest with another all too ‘well know star’ on this toxic stage. No, it was a recognition that he could not keep trusting the instincts that had brought him to the edge.
He returned to Adelaide and re-entered the lives of his children. He became sober—reporting he had been sober since November 7—and began attending church weekly and men’s discipleship gatherings on Monday nights.
Most significantly, he says he has “found God” and is trying to live “Jesus’s way.”
That is more than a vague reference to spirituality. At its heart, Christian spirituality and its Author, Jesus Christ, confronts the exact habits of mind that had kept Ryder trapped:
- Honesty instead of denial. Christian confession begins with telling the truth: not merely that life is hard, but that one’s own choices have caused harm.
- Repentance instead of self-justification. Repentance is not shame or self-hatred. It is a turn—a decision to stop walking in one direction and begin walking in another.
- Grace instead of performance. Elite sport can train people to believe worth depends on output, status and approval. Christian faith and the unrivalled contract of ‘Grace’ – undeserved favour – offers a different foundation: a person is not valuable because they are winning, selected or admired.
- Community instead of isolation. Addiction thrives in secrecy. Church and discipleship place a person among others who know they are imperfect, accountable and in need of support.
- A new identity instead of a temporary fix. Ryder had been defined by football, then threatened by its loss. Christian faith gave him a more durable identity: someone loved by God, responsible for his choices and able to begin again.
His words are striking: “There’s no going back for me because I know what I’ve been saved from.”
That is the language of someone who no longer sees sobriety merely as avoiding substances. He sees it as rescue from a life that was closing in on him.
More than football
Ryder is now back playing local football with Jervois, but the game is no longer carrying the weight of his identity. His children are coming to watch him play in a grand final. He speaks of knowing there is more to life than sport.
That may be the clearest evidence of change.
The old pattern said: I need success, escape or stimulation to survive the pain.
The new pattern says: I am not alone. I can be honest. I can be accountable. I have something to live for beyond the next drink, the next hit, the next game or the next excuse.
Paddy Ryder’s story should not be reduced to a cautionary tale about an AFL player who made bad choices. It is a reminder of how easily pain can become permission, how competence can disguise collapse, and how the most dangerous lies are often the ones we tell ourselves.
His recovery also points to a harder, more hopeful truth: an exit begins when excuses end. For Ryder, Christian faith appears to have provided not just comfort, but a new moral and spiritual framework—one strong enough to challenge the habits that nearly destroyed him.
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Anyone who has watched a loved one battle addiction knows the puzzle well. The person understands exactly what the substance is doing to their health, their job and their relationships. Yet drug cravings pull them back anyway. Researchers have spent more than 50 years trying to work out why. New findings on a small cluster of brain cells may finally offer part of the answer, and they show why prevention has to start long before those cravings ever take hold.
The Brain Chemical Behind the Chase
Dopamine teaches the brain to remember and chase rewards. That much has been understood for years. What has stayed murkier is what actually fuels the relentless effort behind drug cravings, the drive that keeps someone searching for a substance long after the pleasure itself has faded.
Part of the answer may lie with orexin, also known as hypocretin. First identified in 1998, this chemical messenger was later linked to wakefulness in narcolepsy. A small population of orexin producing neurons sits deep in the hypothalamus. From there, it projects widely across the brain, touching systems that govern dopamine, stress, attention and alertness.
Scientists now think orexin plays a central role in what neuroscientists call wanting, which is different from liking. Liking is thepleasure felt once a reward arrives. Wanting is the urgent pull that keeps someone searching and trying, often well past the point where the reward still feels good at all.
What the Latest Study Found
A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences put this to the test. It was led by Hiroyuki Mizoguchi at Nagoya University. Researchers recorded orexin neuron activity in rats working for food rewards. Activity climbed as a reward drew closer, then dropped once it arrived. When the expected reward failed to show up, though, orexin activity stayed high. It was almost as if an internal voice kept telling the animals to keep looking and try again.
The signal grew stronger the more effort a reward demanded, and stronger still as rewards became costlier to obtain. When researchers temporarily suppressed orexin neuron activity, the animals gave up sooner and put in noticeably less effort. This particular study looked at food, not substances. Even so, the pattern offers a useful model for the persistence seen in substance cravings, where the pull can override clear evidence of harm.
A Companion Warning: More Drive Is Not Always Safer
A related study from the same group uncovered something worth noting. Orexin does not just fuel persistence, it can also tilt decision making toward risk. Activating orexin neurons pushed rats toward bigger but far less certain rewards. It is a bit like the way one large win can distort someone’s choices from then on. Suvorexant, a medicine that blocks orexin receptors and is already approved for insomnia, reversed that risky shift in the study.
That matters both ways. Too little orexin signalling can blunt everyday motivation and effort. Too much, or activity aimed at the wrong target, may fuel exactly the kind of relentless, high risk pursuit that shows up in substance cravings.
Why This Matters for Prevention
Understanding orexin does not excuse addictive behaviour, but it does help explain a pattern that has puzzled families and clinicians for decades. Someone can fully understand that smoking causes cancer and still reach for another cigarette. Doctors know the dangers of opioids better than almost anyone, and some still develop dependence, and tragically some still die from overdose. That is not a failure of knowledge or willpower. It reflects a brain system that has learned, often through repeated exposure, to treat drug seeking as an emergency. That emergency signal overrides every other priority in the moment.
This is exactly why early intervention carries so much weight. The research suggests drug cravings quietly narrow a person’s world, shrinking many sources of reward and satisfaction down to one dominant pursuit. Recovery works the other way around. It is the slow, deliberate work of rebuilding many healthy rewards, family, work, sleep, exercise, community and purpose. Once that web is restored, a single substance no longer holds outsized power over daily life. The earlier that healthy web of reward is protected, the less room drug cravings have to take root, particularly among young people whose brains are still developing.
Where the Research Is Heading
Scientists are cautiously exploring new treatment angles. Some medicines act on orexin directly. Others target related appetite regulating hormones such as GLP 1. The hope is that these might one day help people already struggling with substance cravings by quietening intrusive urges and easing withdrawal related sleep problems. Early trials in opioid and alcohol use have shown encouraging signals. Researchers are careful to stress these results are preliminary, not proof of a cure or an established treatment. In August 2026, regulators approved a related orexin targeting medicine for narcolepsy, a reminder of just how quickly this field is moving.
None of that changes the central point. Medication may one day help open a window of opportunity. It cannot replace the everyday work of building resilience, healthy routines and strong support networks well before drug cravings ever get a foothold. The brain’s remarkable capacity for persistence is not the enemy here. Addiction simply hijacks that capacity for its own ends. Prevention, education and early support can give that same persistence somewhere healthier to go.
(Source: WRD News)
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For many loved ones with addiction in the household, grief rarely arrives in one clear moment. Instead, it lingers quietly. It resurfaces whenever a familiar face suddenly feels like a stranger. A newly published study now gives that experience a name. It also explains why families affected by addiction so often describe their pain as confusing rather than clear cut.
What Is Ambiguous Loss?
The research appeared in Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly. It examined what psychologists call ambiguous loss among adult relatives of people with Alcohol Use Disorder. Unlike the loss that follows a death, ambiguous loss has no clear ending. The person is still physically present. Yet the relationship families once knew can feel as though it has quietly slipped away. As a result, closure becomes difficult
to reach, and grief rarely follows a predictable path.
Alongside ambiguous loss, researchers highlighted a related idea called boundary ambiguity. This describes the uncertainty many families feel about who truly belongs within the family system. It also covers confusion over which roles each person is meant to hold. When addiction disrupts routines, responsibilities and trust, these boundaries blur. Relatives are often left unsure whether to step in, step back or simply wait things out.
The Hidden Toll on Relatives
Families affected by addiction already carry a heavy load. Earlier research cited within the study points to elevated risks of neglect, intimate partner violence and financial strain among relatives. Sleep problems and disordered eating patterns are common too. So is declining mental health. Meanwhile, public stigma around addiction often discourages families from reaching out for support in the first place.
Flexibility, Resilience and the Cost of Coping
One notable focus of the study was psychological flexibility. This concept is built around twelve interconnected ways people respond to difficult thoughts and emotions. Researchers found that flexibility protected relatives from distress. Yet somewhat surprisingly, it appeared to limit resilience over time. Psychological inflexibility told a different story. Marked by avoidance and rigid thinking, it increased distress. Even so, it seemed to strengthen coping capacity in the long run.
Boundary ambiguity produced a similarly complex pattern. Greater uncertainty about family roles was linked to higher distress. However, it also appeared to build resilience. Relatives learned to tolerate the unknown over time. Researchers suggested that withdrawing from a chaotic family dynamic may help. Although emotionally difficult, this distancing can allow family members affected by addiction to protect themselves. This happens even when it conflicts with their deeper values around loyalty and care.
Why Boundaries Are Not a Failure of Love
This tension will feel familiar to many households. Loved ones often want to stay engaged and supportive. Yet that same engagement can come at a real personal cost. The study effectively validates what countless families already sense instinctively. Stepping back is not always a failure of love. Sometimes, it is simply a necessary act of self-preservation.
There is a broader lesson here too. Rather than treating boundary setting as a sign of a family falling apart, the findings suggest something different. These responses can be adaptive. They can even be protective. Values rarely point in one clear direction when addiction is involved. Families are often forced to weigh competing priorities rather than choose between right and wrong.
The study’s authors were careful to note something important. Alcohol Use Disorder covers a wide spectrum of severity. So no single experience can represent every family affected by addiction. Still, the research offers a useful reminder. Recovery is not only about the person using alcohol. It is also about the relatives quietly absorbing the uncertainty around them. They deserve compassion. They deserve practical guidance too, and encouragement to seek support long before a crisis forces the issue.
Finding a Way Forward
Understanding ambiguous loss will not resolve the confusion overnight. However, naming the experience gives relatives something concrete to hold onto. It opens the door to earlier conversations about boundaries and wellbeing. It also points toward where families affected by addiction can turn for genuine, lasting support.
(Source: WRD News)
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Recovery Review published a blog post this month. It offers recovery advice for doctors that could reshape how graduating medical students approach patients living with substance use disorders.
Recovery advocate Justin Bell wrote the piece for a friend, a physician. She was preparing her annual address to medical students. Her question was simple: what would a person in recovery say to a doctor stepping into their career? Bell answered with four lessons. They came from his own experience of addiction and healing. His insight also came from years spent listening to others describe their treatment. Too often, he found, well-meaning clinicians simply did not understand addiction.
Bell remembers a doctor once dismissing his escalating painkiller use as a “bump in the road.” The doctor sent him out the door soon after. That memory shapes the whole piece. Bell argues that recovery advice for doctors has to start with attitude, long before it reaches a prescription pad.
Recovery Advice for Doctors Starts With the Odds
The first lesson challenges a common assumption in medicine. Many doctors treat addiction as a lifelong or fatal condition. Bell disagrees, and the numbers back him up. He cites Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration data. Among the 31
Medication Alone Will Not Untangle Addiction
Bell welcomes the growing use of medications such as buprenorphine and methadone. He calls this an evidence based step forward in treating opioid use disorder. But he is firm on one point. Medication cannot substitute for human connection. He points to social prescribing in the UK. There, physicians refer patients to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or sober social groups alongside conventional treatment. Isolation, trauma and distrust run through addiction like a tangled web. No medication untangles them alone.
Guidance for Treating Patients in Recovery Includes Respecting Peers
The letter’s third lesson takes aim at hospital culture. Bell urges tomorrow’s doctors not to sideline colleagues who work as certified peer specialists, recovery coaches or navigators. Some of these colleagues are openly in recovery themselves. Writing them off as former patients, or handing them only minor tasks, wastes a doctor’s most valuable asset. Peers can build trust with patients far faster than clinicians alone.
Curiosity Builds Trust Where Assumptions Break It
Bell’s final point is also his most practical. Ask questions. Do not make assumptions. He encourages physicians to raise a substance use history noted on a patient’s chart directly with that patient. Doctors, he adds, should check comfort levels before prescribing opioids to someone in recovery. Assume less, he writes, and doctors become allies rather than gatekeepers.
Medical schools face growing pressure to strengthen training on substance use disorders. They increasingly treat peer support and trauma informed care as central to that training, not optional extras. Families and communities work to stop addiction before it takes hold. Bell’s guidance for treating patients in recovery carries a simple message for them too. Curious, judgement free care from a doctor can matter just as much as any prescription. (Source: WRD News)
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Ask someone why they can’t put their phone down and they’ll probably laugh it off. Ask them why they can’t cut back on drinking, and the conversation gets heavier fast. Both answers start in the same place: a reward circuit in the brain that doesn’t much care whether the trigger is a text message or a drink. Understanding how addiction affects the brain explains a lot about why some habits grip harder and faster than others. The circuit is the same. The speed at which it fires is not.
What Happens in the Brain During Addiction
Dopamine is the chemical doing most of the work here. Something feels good, dopamine gets released, and the brain quietly files that moment away as worth repeating. Do it enough times and the circuit itself starts to change shape. Eventually the brain wants the trigger before it has even arrived. Plenty of people describe reaching for a habit as a kind of self-medication, something to blunt stress, boredom, or pain. The trouble is that the brain adapts to it, and what started as a choice stops feeling like one.
How Addiction Affects the Brain at Different Speeds
Not everything gets there at the same pace. Nicotine can hit the brain within seconds of a single inhale, which is part of why it produces such a sharp, immediate lift. Alcohol takes the scenic route, moving through the digestive system before it reaches the brain, though it still lands hard once it does. Stimulants barely pause on the way, flooding the reward circuit almost as fast as nicotine and just as intensely. That speed is exactly why they carry such a steep risk of dependence, sometimes after only a handful of uses. When a surge hits that quickly, the brain has almost no chance to talk itself down.
Why Substances Often Move Faster than Habits
Behaviours reach the same circuit, just by a longer road. A gambling win, a shopping haul, a flurry of likes on a post, all of it needs processing first. Only then does the brain decide it’s worth a reward. That extra step means the dopamine tends to arrive slower and land softer than it does with most substances. Frequency changes the equation, though. A phone that buzzes every few minutes works the same trick, and so does a slot machine paying out on no fixed schedule. Either one can train the brain to crave the next hit almost as hard as a drug would. Even so, each individual reward stays small.
The Same Circuit, a Different Risk Profile
Because substances tend to hit the circuit harder and faster, they also tend to build tolerance and withdrawal faster. Anyone who has skipped their morning coffee and spent the afternoon nursing a headache already knows what that feels like, even in miniature. Behavioural patterns can become just as consuming, given enough time, though they usually take longer to get there. That’s probably why they still get waved off as bad habits rather than treated as genuine risks. The numbers say otherwise. An estimated eight million Americans struggle with problem gambling. Roughly one in ten social media users show patterns that look a lot more like dependence than simple overuse.
Why This Matters for Prevention
A teenage brain is still under construction, particularly in the areas that handle judgement and impulse control. That makes early exposure to any fast acting trigger far riskier for a young person than for an adult. It’s also why prevention works better when it focuses on delaying first use rather than managing exposure after the fact. Willpower alone rarely carries the weight people expect it to. Families, schools, and communities all matter here. So do the industries designing products meant to hold attention, from slot machines to social media feeds to ad campaigns. Looking at product design and early intervention gets closer to how the brain science of addiction actually plays out. That’s a more honest picture than treating every case as a personal failing.
Noticing how fast a trigger reaches the brain is a useful place to start. So is watching how relentlessly it can reshape behaviour once it settles in. Anyone worried about a habit, their own or someone else’s, is better off understanding how addiction affects the brain before the pattern hardens. The earlier support comes in, the more room the brain still has to bend back the other way.
(Source: WRD News)
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