If you have ever lived with a chronic alcoholic, then you know what it’s like to have a shabu addict in your family. The impact of a heavy drug user is similar to that of an alcoholic. Arguments abound. Conflict and a never-ending series of problems are the order of the day.

The family has to deal with the addict’s strong mood swings, which are unpredictable. He is very negative in his thinking. His behavior is erratic and irresponsible. He shows an increasing inability to function. He neglects his responsibilities. He withdraws from family activities, preferring to isolate himself in his room or go out with his friends.

If he is married with children, the spouse and the kids feel a profound sense of loss and rejection as he neglects them. As the addict gets more deeply into his drugs, he shows less and less love for his family and more and more concern for his drugs and his drug-taking friends. The wife feels she has lost a husband and the kids a father.

The parents of the teenage addict feel frustration and anger as their child spins more and more out of control. It gets to the point where they feel they are at war with their own son and their own daughter. They sense that they are losing their grip on the child. Deep in their hearts, they cannot believe that all this is happening to the child they thought they knew but who has become a stranger in their home.

The spouse of an addict feels that King Shabu has kidnapped her husband. It is as if the man she loves has turned his back on her and joined some mysterious cult that has totally transformed him from the lovable person he used to be to the insensitive, unloving, disloyal husband who has cast her out of his heart.

The addict becomes increasingly defensive and hostile toward family members when they confront him with his irresponsible behavior. And one common characteristic of the addict’s behavior is that he completely shuts down all relevant communications with his family. He leads his own secret life. The family simply cannot penetrate the wall of silence that the addict erects around himself.

What is, however, more sinister are the changes that take place in the members of the addict’s family. Slowly, they turn away from their own needs and increasingly focus on the addict, who is causing all kinds of trouble and who seems to be in a perpetual state of emergency. The family’s energies are spent on coping with the problems that the addict causes. It is as if everyone is called upon in some way to deal with the chaos he is causing.

Everyone in the family is forced to focus on him, whether they like it or not. And some family members begin to dislike him intensely for the continuous tensions that he creates in the house. He may disappear for days on end. He steals from his own family. He is becoming less and less functional and more and more dependent on them for everything. He is draining their finances even as he refuses to work.

The family fears he will be arrested. They wonder where he gets his money for his drugs and suspect that he might be pushing. They are continuously on the lookout for strange, weird-looking characters that he hangs out with, and they wonder what scheme or scam he might be into.

The family is frustrated because the addict refuses to get the help that he obviously needs so badly. They are angry at all his lies and broken promises. Family members are sick and tired of having to cover up for him. They are angry at him for the shame that he is bringing to the family. They are fed up with having to take upon themselves their responsibilities and liabilities. They are angry at having to bail him out of his financial troubles, which seem to be endless and growing more serious.

Living with an addict is like living in a hell that grows hotter with each passing day.