The Ambiguous Grief of Loving Someone with Addiction

Normalizing the experience of grief includes normalizing the broad causes of grief. Because grief comes much more than death of a person. Lea Turner shares five unique ways grief hits, and five scriptural comforts, in the ambiguous loss of loving someone with an addiction.

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Loving someone with an addiction can feel like watching someone you care about drift out to sea while standing on the shore, wanting so badly to pull them back in but knowing they must decide to swim. As you wait for them to reach out, ready to fight back to shore, you grieve all that’s lost.

When my son turned sixteen, we noticed him starting to experiment with drugs. At first, we brushed it off as just a phase—something he’d outgrow like most teenage things, except it didn’t get better; in fact, it spiraled. One thing led to the next, and before we knew it, we were navigating the heartache of rehab stays and the harsh reality of loving someone with an addiction.

There’s a term for this kind of grief—one that doesn’t have answers, one that doesn’t always come with closure. It’s called ambiguous grief.

I’ve struggled to understand it, not knowing how to feel—unsure how to move forward. Here’s what I’ve learned walking through the ambiguous grief of loving someone with addiction.

5 Ways Grief Hits When You Love Someone with Addiction

1. Ambiguous grief goes unrecognized

Since there is no gravesite to visit, and there are more questions than answers, this type of loss is highly misunderstood, which in turn makes this grief feel insignificant and unworthy of being felt.

As a mother, I envisioned my kids leaving for college, finding someone they would marry, and living happily ever after. Yeah, maybe I created false expectations, but there’s a call for youth to leave the haven of their family and venture into the unknown. Addiction rips that from you.

After three rehab attempts and exhausting our resources and ourselves, my son left our home. I felt a deep sense of loss instead of joy in anticipating his future. His departure seemed more like a death than a launch into manhood. I remember walking into his room the day after he left, and an array of emotions flooded over me, catching me off guard. All my feelings I held captive for the last few months as I watched my son suffer through addiction unexpectedly washed over me.

I once read this quote, “One of the hardest things you will ever do, my dear, is grieve the loss of a person who is still alive.” (Jeannette Walls)

There’s complex pain we experience when someone is physically present but intimately gone. We grieve the brokenness, what we thought life should look like, and the way addiction has completely changed our loved ones. However, Scripture reminds us that God sees every tear we shed (Psalm 56:8). God knows the weight of our grief, even if others don’t.

2.  Uncertainty intensifies the pain

Ambiguous grief is marked by uncertainty—will they recover?

Loving someone in addiction feels like your life is a cascading domino effect, one tragic event leading to another, each toppling into the next in a seemingly never-ending cycle of hope and disappointment. Wondering if things will change keeps you in prolonged emotional turmoil while pieces of shattered reality lie scattered, leaving you wondering what went wrong.

I remember feeling like there was no clear line between what had been lost and what might be recovered. As the protective shield of shock and numbness faded, the raw reality that, yes, my son is struggling with addiction and may never be clean set in. I constantly hoped that he would return after overcoming his addiction and things would go back to the way they were.

This perpetual cycle of hope and heartache is emotionally exhausting, leaving you in a state of limbo—neither fully grieving nor fully at peace. As Christians, we can take comfort knowing that though we may feel adrift, God is steadfast and unchanging. (Psalm 62:6). 

3. Hope and heartache coexist with other intense emotions.

Living in the tension of loving someone with addiction means that hope and heartache coexist with intense feelings like shame, guilt, and anger.

I upheld a façade of normalcy for months as I shuttled back and forth to visit my son at rehab, hiding my true destination from most of our friends and family. I fed them fabricated stories about his well-being, which only heaped shame and guilt and pushed me into isolation. Who could I share with because my story intertwined with his story? What was mine to share?

Finally, I unraveled the tangled-up mess of emotions with my therapist. As I shared, I realized acknowledging and processing all the different emotions was part of the healing process.

As a mom, I stayed hopeful for his recovery yet grieved the pain addiction brought into our lives. Staying hopeful, even when faced with adversity, is what gave me the strength to prioritize my mental health instead of withdrawing into apathy and hopelessness. Our hope is ultimately in Christ, not in our earthly circumstances. (Romans 5:3-5)

4. Healing requires surrendering our desire to fix the situation.

When loving someone with addiction, it’s easy to feel responsible for their choices and overwhelmed by the desire to fix the situation.

One of the most brutal truths I had to face was realizing I could not control or change my son’s behavior. I watched in disappointment and sadness as he drifted further into addiction. Letting go of control is like letting go of a balloon as it slowly slips away. As we release our grip on the string, we realize we could lose it in the vast expanse of the sky, or it could get tangled up somewhere. Just as we can’t control where a balloon drifts, we can’t control the outcome of our loved one’s addiction.

By surrendering control to God and accepting reality, I could begin to grieve what was lost, let go of what I expected my son’s life to look like, and begin trusting God with both his healing and my peace. Proverbs 3:5-6 reminds us to trust in the Lord with all our heart and acknowledge He is in control, even when circumstances are beyond our grasp. Surrender doesn’t mean we’re giving up hope, but entrusting our grief and loved one into the hands of our capable Father.  

5. Self-care becomes essential

When you are consumed with caring for someone with addiction, it’s easy to lose yourself. You pour all your energy into trying to help them loosen their grip on addiction, and you sacrifice your well-being. Self-care is essential in ambiguous grief.

When I began my grief journey, I wasn’t good at listening to my body. Resting was a sign of weakness to me until, in the heat of my son’s addiction, I unearthed the impact grief was having on my physical body, including decision fatigue, memory loss, and extreme fatigue.

God deeply cares about our physical well-being. (3 John 2) Taking the time to care for yourself is not selfish—it’s honoring the life God entrusted you.

Ambiguous grief is real, even when it isn’t acknowledged, and deserves to be felt. Bring your heartache to God, and trust knowing there is hope in the midst of our grief.