Addiction is a difficult and painful road, and to love an addict is to try and maneuver that road without ever having learned how to drive. For the codependent, loving an addict is going 100 miles an hour without a seatbelt. As loved ones of addicts, the more we can understand about addiction and codependency and how the two impact each other in personal relationships the better able we will be to recognize what we need to do both for ourselves and for the addicts in our lives.