If your loved one has taken a ski trip down the powdery white slopes of Nose Candy Mountain, you know you need to be patient and loving to aid in the recovery process. You shouldn’t abandon your freshly sober partner, but at the same time you’ve already been a door matt long enough, and it’s high time you made some life changes of your own.

Maybe you’ve just met your new mate, or maybe you’ve been together for years. Even if you haven’t been around long enough to know the abuse she has so readily served up on so many in the past, you can rest assured that her fall to shame has been a path strewn with bodies.

Don’t let her treat you the way she treated others when she was using. If you let her walk all over you, it will only make her recovery that much more difficult.

If she says she feels the need to use, remind her of the people she hurt, crimes she committed and what you’ll do to her if she ever goes back to that way of life.

If she starts hanging out with the old crowd, consider getting her away from them by monitoring her calls and installing a GPS tracker on her car. If that doesn’t work, try locking her in the basement for a few days for her own safety. She’ll come around eventually.

The drug addict has many tools to get back to drug use, but you also have tools to keep her sober. You have support groups, the justice system, and never forget the most powerful tool of all; fear.

In the end you can both be happy. You can wholly own a lovable friend or more-than-friend who will never stray, and she’ll have the guaranteed path to recovery for which she’d so graciously trade everything she has to offer, and that’s a better deal than she’ll ever get from a traditional institution, her closest family members or her ex-pimp.