Support for you
Rooms for your side of the problem. The rooms are free — knowing which door is yours shouldn't cost anything either.
Family fellowships exist because loving someone through addiction is its own kind of exhaustion, and it has its own recovery. Their starting point is the one every family eventually reaches: you didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it. Here's the map, in plain language.
Before anything else: we are independent. Help My Loved One is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Al-Anon Family Groups, Nar-Anon, Families Anonymous, Co-Dependents Anonymous, SMART Recovery, or any fellowship named here. These descriptions are our own words — we describe, we don't reproduce. Every literature and meeting link goes to the organizations' own official websites, and nowhere else. Meetings are peer support, not detox, medical care, therapy, or financial advice.
Families of drinkers
Al-Anon
Free peer-support meetings for people whose lives are affected by someone else's drinking — parents, partners, adult children, friends. Nobody signs you up, nobody tells your loved one you came, nobody charges a fee, and nobody makes you talk. You sit with people who have lived your exact 2 a.m., and you discover the sentence that changes everything: you are not the only one.
Families facing drugs
Nar-Anon
The same idea, for people affected by someone else's drug use. If your family's story involves opioids, please also read the safety note below — it's the one piece of this page that can't wait for a meeting.
Relatives & friends
Families Anonymous
Peer support for relatives and friends worried about someone's drug use or related behaviour — many parents of teens and adult children land here. Same free, first-names-only structure; a different room, and for some families the right one.
The rescuer's chair
CoDA
Co-Dependents Anonymous — for people who keep finding themselves in the rescuer's chair, relationship after relationship, and want to understand why. Less about your loved one's substance, more about the pattern that keeps recruiting you.
Secular & science-based
SMART Recovery Family & Friends
Not a 12-step person? SMART Recovery runs free, science-based Family & Friends meetings — in person and online — built on tools rather than steps, drawing on the same CRAFT ideas our playbook teaches. Many families blend it with Al-Anon rather than choosing one. The right room is the one you'll actually walk into.
The kids in the house
Alateen & Narateen
Meetings specifically for young people — roughly ages 12 to 19 — affected by a family member's drinking or drug use, with trained adult members present. If your kids are living this too, they deserve their own room. Kids Help Phone (1-800-668-6868) is there for them any hour, about anything.
Your first meeting: what actually happens
- Nobody makes you talk. You can sit, listen, and leave — that counts as going.
- First names only. No sign-in sheet, no record you were there, and your loved one is never told.
- You'll hear your own 2 a.m. in someone else's voice — usually within the first twenty minutes.
- Nobody there will hand you a technique to make your person quit. That's precisely the burden the room helps you set down.
- It ends on time — usually 60 to 90 minutes — and someone offers you a phone number.
Meeting times change. We never republish schedules — the official finders above are the only source worth trusting. The safety note: if drugs are part of your family's story, ask your pharmacist about naloxone — in most of Canada it's available at the pharmacy counter and can reverse an opioid overdose while you wait for help. If you fear for their life tonight, call 911.
When a meeting isn't the whole answer.
A meeting holds you between weeks; it can't get your person into treatment, and it isn't allowed to refer them to rehab. If there's fear in your home, if kids are absorbing the chaos, or if your own health is sliding — that's the signal to add family therapy. And if your person has shown a crack of willingness — or you want the plan ready before they do — that's the moment to move from support to logistics. We can make that introduction.
Ask us to help you find itIn crisis right now? Call or text 988, any hour.