The passenger’s brake

You check pockets, you count money, you call at three in the morning. You press the brake in a car you are not driving. There is another seat.

By the apex/rtisi online team · 25 October 2026

It might be your partner who drinks. Your adult child who uses. Your brother who bets. We write “he”. The same goes for “she”. If your child is under 18, keeping an eye on them is your responsibility, not a brake.

Think of an ordinary night in a home like this. The mother sleeps with her phone on the pillow. The partner counted the money in the drawer before going to bed. The child listens for the key in the door. From the sound alone, they can tell whether tonight will be quiet. Grandma is told he works too much. Work is told he has a bug. Nobody ever decided it. But everyone knows the rule: we don’t talk about this outside. So you carry a secret that isn’t even yours. And you have no one to tell.

Addiction never stays with one person. The whole home lives it. Outside, he may work normally and never miss a day. That says nothing about what you live through at home.

The passenger seat

Picture a car with the addiction at the wheel. Everyone else sits in the passenger seat.

If you have ever sat next to someone driving too fast, you know the movement. Your right foot presses a brake. There is no pedal down there. But you press it with all your strength. The car doesn’t slow down by a single mile an hour. The only thing that brake does is tighten you.

Going through pockets. The phone calls at three in the morning. The threats, the pleading, the lies to the neighbours. All of these are brakes pressed from the passenger seat. It has a name: negative control. It is when you try to decide what the other person will do and feel. Often you do it to quiet your own fear.

You don’t do these things out of weakness. They are your way of coping. Research with families in many countries describes it as strain that builds over years. It shows in the sleep, the nerves and the health of the people who live alongside.

When love becomes enabling

A home often goes through a sequence. At first you don’t want to see it. The missing money, the late nights, the excuses. Then you can think of nothing else. Your sense of your own worth starts rising and falling with his day. And you forget what you need.

And at some point, without noticing, love becomes enabling. You pay the rent. You clear a debt. You cover for him at work. You clean up after him, so nothing shows in the morning. And the using carries on, more comfortably than before.

There is also something few people expect. Even when he stops, your foot often stays on the brake. Out of habit. That is why the change concerns you too, not only him.

Your own steering wheel

You cannot decide what he will do. Or what he will think or feel. As long as you try, you are pressing the brake that isn’t there.

But you can decide what is yours. What you think, what you feel, what you do. We call this positive control. You lift your foot off the brake that isn’t there. And you take the wheel of your own life.

In practice it looks like small things. You don’t call a third time to see where he is. You stop lying about him to grandma. You see your friends again. You sleep with your phone on the bedside table, not on the pillow. And if you need to talk, choose a moment when he hasn’t been drinking or using. Say it simply, without anger. “I love you. I won’t cover for you at work any more.”

At first it will feel like not caring. When you let go of one extreme, you think you are heading for the other. If you used to control everything, controlling less feels like abandoning him. Usually it isn’t. The middle ground is simply still unfamiliar to you.

Letting someone live with the consequences of a choice they made is not abandoning them. This does not apply when their life or health is at risk. It is handing their life back to them. You can tell him where you found help. The work itself, you cannot do for him.

If he drinks heavily every day, he should not stop suddenly without a doctor. If someone is in danger right now, call your local emergency number (112 in Europe, 166 in Greece). If there is violence at home, call the police: 112 across Europe, 100 in Greece.