SUDGuide.com · a free resource from IntelleWisdom
Someone you love may be using.
This page is for you — the person doing the worrying. Start wherever you actually are. Nothing here asks you to buy anything.
If this is an emergency
You have noticed things and been told you are imagining it. Work out whether what you are seeing is a pattern.
They are using, missing, in danger, or you have just found out. What to do in the next hour.
Choosing care, paying for it, holding a boundary, and what to do when there is a slip.
You have noticed something.
Money that keeps going missing. A new set of friends. Someone you have known your whole life lying to you about small things. You have explained it away more than once — and you have probably stopped believing your own explanations. You are not overreacting for wanting to know.
Signs at a glance — tap to open full size
Enabling and supporting — tap to open full size
When you are not in the same place — tap to open full size
Is it a pattern, or a bad month?
One category of sign is a rough patch. Three or more, holding for weeks, is the thing worth acting on. That single rule prevents most of the false alarms — and most of the years people lose waiting for certainty.
Before you say anything
The most common opening — laying out the evidence — is the one most likely to end the conversation. Knowing which stage they are actually in changes what you say first.
Find a professional assessment
findtreatment.gov is the federal treatment locator — no advertising, no referral fees. An assessment is not a commitment to treatment.
Talk to someone first
1-800-662-4357SAMHSA National Helpline. Free, confidential, 24/7, in English and Spanish. They will talk to family members, not just the person using.
Going deeper. The full six-category framework, what to say and what not to say, and how to prepare for the conversation are in Recognizing and Responding to Substance Abuse — chapters two through five.
Something is happening right now.
Do the next thing on this list. You can read the rest later.
If they are unresponsive
Call 911.Say “possible overdose” and stay on the line. Put them on their side. Most states have Good Samaritan laws that protect the caller — make the call.
Naloxone (Narcan)
Available over the counter without a prescription at most U.S. pharmacies. It cannot hurt someone who is not overdosing, so if you are unsure, give it. Get some before you need it.
If they are talking about ending their life
988Call or text. Stay with them. Ask directly — asking does not plant the idea, and it is the question that lets them answer.
Unknown pill or substance
1-800-222-1222Poison Control. Free, 24/7, and they will tell you whether it needs an ER.
They are going to use anyway
1-800-484-3731 Never Use Alone stays on the phone and dispatches help if the person stops responding. Not approval — a way to still have someone alive tomorrow.
You, at two in the morning
1-800-662-4357SAMHSA will talk to you even when the crisis is not yours. You do not have to hold this alone until business hours.
Treatment, and what comes after it.
The hardest part of this stretch is that the decisions are technical and you are making them exhausted. These four questions, in this order, settle most of it.
Choosing a level of care — tap to open full size
Vetting a program
Ask what happens in week three, what the staffing ratio is overnight, and what they do when someone relapses. A program that answers those specifically is a different animal from one that answers warmly.
Check the marketing
The referral business has a real patient-brokering problem. Google now only permits addiction-treatment advertising from LegitScript-certified providers — a reasonable floor to hold any facility to.
Medication is treatment
Buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone are not “swapping one drug for another.” Programs that say so are decades behind their own field.
Support for you, separately
Al-Anon and Nar-Anon are for family members. SMART Recovery Family & Friends is the CRAFT-based, secular alternative.
A lapse is not a relapse — tap to open full size
Your own recovery is a separate project
This changes the people around it, and the change does not reverse on its own when the using stops. The Craving Recovery blog covers the ongoing work; LifeScaping and MindScaping are the practices for rebuilding after — boundaries, grief, and the part where you get your own life back.
Going deeper. Levels of care, medication compared, relapse response, family roles, and nineteen real family stories — ten who made it and nine who did not — are in Recognizing and Responding to Substance Abuse.
About this page
SUDGuide.com is published by IntelleWisdom, the publishing imprint of VisionLogic, LLC — St. George, Utah. It is free, carries no advertising, and accepts no referral fees from any treatment provider. Written by Kevin Brough, MAMFT, CHT, a marriage and family therapist who has founded and directed treatment centers, detox programs, and recovery retreats in the U.S. and Central America.
This page is educational and is not a substitute for professional assessment or treatment. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911. · Resources last reviewed: August 2026.
LifeScaping™, HealthScaping™, MindScaping™, The P3 Model™, the Significant Event Process™, the Releasing Practice™, and the Belief-Busting Process™ are marks of VisionLogic, LLC. · VisionLogic.org · The book
Companion Tools & Resources
Every tool the book names, in the order you meet it
If you are reading Recognizing and Responding to Substance Abuse and a chapter pointed you to SUDGuide.com, this is the page it meant. Everything below is free, runs in your browser, and asks for no account.
You do not need the book to use any of it. And you do not need to do them in order — pick the one that matches the week you are actually having.
As they appear in the book
Chapter references are to the printed edition.
Where the risk actually sits — family history, early adversity, mental health, environment, and pattern of use — scored into one page you can print or take to an assessment.
App. 7
A dated log across all six categories, with the rule that matters: count the categories, not the signs. Written down, a pattern stops being something you can be talked out of. Two pages, free PDF.
The team, the boundaries, the rehearsal, the time and place, and the bed-and-transport checklist — plus what you each do if the answer is no. Two pages, free PDF.
The sample conversations from Chapter V, on this page under Before you say anything — including what to do when they genuinely do not remember.
The whole-person health frame behind Chapter VII — and its companion, Nutrition & Supplements for Mind & Mood, which covers the amino-acid work in Appendix 6.
App. 7
People, places, feelings and times — each one paired with a response decided in advance, while nobody is activated. Plus HALT, and what the first twenty-four hours look like if it happens anyway. Two pages, free PDF.
App. 7
For you, not for them. Sleep, food, movement, contact, and the one thing you will not give up this month — plus a window-of-tolerance check and the three rings, for sorting what is actually yours. Two pages, free PDF.
Ch. XIII
Forty questions across attachment style, the four survival responses, and moral injury. This is the tool Chapter XIII sends you to.
The full system the book borrows from: awareness, innate skills, and congruence with true intent. Free, and the same tools a therapist would hand you.
What we hide, we cannot heal. This one maps the disowned parts that show up as judgment, reactivity, and the things you swore you would never do.
Perception of Potential Pain — naming the pain being avoided, which is almost never the substance itself. Guided worksheet, plus a one-page handout.
Ch. XVIII
Letting go of what you are still carrying. Chapter XVIII uses the same practice for couples.
Turning an experience into something usable — one path for setbacks, another for wins. Seven steps, saveable and printable.
Changing the stories that run the show — the ones formed young, held without evidence, and defended hardest.
The sweep, the sorting, and the clearing, ending in a plan you can bring to a therapist — nothing you write leaves your own device. There is also a one-page handout. A full sweep is too much during withdrawal or the first raw weeks; the family member has no such wait.
named
The three perceptual positions, then the move inward — body, heart, mind, and spirit seen from one centred place. One page, free PDF.
The libraries
Named in Companion Tools & Resources at the back of the book.
VisionLogic Psychoeducation Library
Thirty-one one-page guides, free to download and free to hand to someone else — the Window of Tolerance, the Four F’s of trauma, ACEs and resilience, Stages of Change, the SAMHSA Six Principles and Four R’s, attachment and repair, EMDR, IFS, ACT, DBT skills, the emotion wheel, and the rest. Several chapters of this book stand on them.
Every interactive assessment and guided practice in one index, including the ones listed above.
The structure of a recovery plan — supports, triggers, medication, routine, and what happens on a hard day.
Twelve life categories, scored honestly, so effort goes where the gap actually is rather than where it is most comfortable.
One of the few interventions with a clean evidence base and almost no cost to try. Structured, not vague.
Starting from what is already working. Useful when a family has spent two years cataloguing what is not.
Printable worksheets
The rest of the Family Worksheet Series — Appendices 5 and 7. Free PDFs, sized for a binder. The intervention planner, Signs I’m Noticing, the Trigger-Management Plan and the Self-Care Plan above belong to the same set.
What is agreed, by whom, and what happens if it is not — written while everyone is calm, with a review date set in advance and a signature line for each person.
A boundary is something you do, not something they must agree to. This one makes you write the second half — and starts with an honest audit of last week.
These tools are educational. They are not a diagnosis and they are not treatment — and the evidence is consistent that structured self-help works best alongside a person, not instead of one. If you are looking for that person, start at findtreatment.gov. Tools last reviewed: September 2026.
If this page helped
There is a book behind it
This page stays free, and it is not a sample chapter. Everything above is yours whether you ever buy anything or not. But a web page can only hold so much, and some of what families need is longer than a page.
Recognizing and Responding to Substance Abuse
A Guide for Families and Friends to Navigate Substance Use Disorders
Written for the person doing the worrying — the mother reading at two in the morning, the husband who does not know whether to call someone, the sister who keeps being told she is overreacting.
- Nineteen real stories. Ten people who made it and nine who did not, because a guide that tells only the successes cannot be trusted about the successes.
- The conversations, written out. What to say, what not to say, and what to do when they genuinely do not remember.
- Levels of care and medication compared — and how to tell a good program from a good brochure.
- The chapters underneath the behavior: the roots of the craving, attachment and moral injury, guilt and shame, grief, and the five tools in Chapter XVI.
Kindle pre-order is open now. Paperback on release day, 30 October 2026.
Every tool the book points to is already on this page, free, and stays that way — see Companion Tools & Resources above. SUDGuide.com carries no advertising and accepts no referral fees from any treatment provider.
