Drug And Alcohol Treatment Centers Texas – Enterhealth Alcohol And Drug Rehab Ranch

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How Addiction Harms the Family

Alcohol and drug addiction is a family disease.

Everyone in the family – spouses, children, siblings, parents, and others – suffers when one is an addict. The family problems caused by alcohol addiction and drug addiction can be severe and long-lasting.

Family members of alcoholics and drug addicts suffer from a variety of issues related to their loved one’s addiction. These include:

Physical, emotional, and sexual abuse
Difficulty in managing anger
Poor self-esteem
Anxiety disorders
Depression
Frequent medical illnesses
Difficulty in forming and maintaining relationships
Marital problems or divorce
Their own addictions

Family members need to learn how to recognize the problems caused by the addiction, understand the roles they have unwittingly played in the addiction, assess the psychological damage they have suffered, and develop new interpersonal skills.

The most important thing for family members of an addict to understand is that addiction is a disease, not a moral failing or inborn sin. As such, it is treatable and manageable. It may be difficult to come to grips with this truth, and you may have trouble letting go of years of accumulated anger and resentment, but be encouraged to know that with this new understanding and skills that you can develop you can help your addicted loved one recover – and it will also improve your life tremendously.

Emotional Instability

In a healthy, well-functioning family, all members feel free to communicate with one another, express their emotions, trust each other, and tell the truth. This is simply not the case in most families of addicts. The first step toward recovery is recognition of the problem: only then can you begin taking steps to heal it.

Children of Addicts

In families where alcohol and drugs are abused, parental behavior is frequently unpredictable and communication is unclear. Family life is characterized by chaos and volatility. Not understanding the cause of a parent’s erratic behavior, a child can feel confused and insecure. While he may love and feel concern for his parent, he may also feel angry and hurt that the parent does not love him enough to stop using. As a result, a child of an addict can adopt abnormal coping skills and the effects can be long-lasting, even into adulthood. With proper treatment, adult children of addicts can acquire healthy coping skills that can lead to rewarding interpersonal relationships and a satisfying family life.

Addiction has a very strong genetic component: the children of an addict have at least a fifty-fifty chance of becoming addicts themselves. However, genetic tendency only indicates a risk. Those who never use alcohol or drugs cannot become addicted. Therefore, it’s extremely important that the children of alcoholics and the children of substance abusers learn that abstinence is the best prevention.

Codependency

One of the major problems seen in the families of addicts is codependency – a complex relationship between the addict and a family member that appears to be loving, but is actually harmful and potentially dangerous.

Codependence is a set of dysfunctional behaviors that family members adopt in order to survive the emotional pain and stress caused by addiction.

These enabling behaviors may temporarily lessen conflict and ease tension within the family, but in the long run they are extremely counterproductive. Breaking the cycle of codependence usually requires help.

Getting Help

The counselors at Enterhealth can recommend individual therapists, family therapists, and groups that offer help to the addicted person and his or her family and friends.

Individual therapists typically focus on specific issues of sobriety and teach the addict new, more effective ways to deal with stress.
Family therapists usually engage all family members to help identify unhealthy patterns of behavior in the family and replace them with new, healthier patterns.
Group therapy typically involves multiple families at the same time, so that families can share ideas about and solutions to their mutual problems, while providing support for each other.

In addition to therapists, there are organizations that specialize in treating family members of alcoholics and drug addicts.

Al-Anon for Families

Al-Anon and Alateen are international organizations jointly known as Al-Anon Family Groups with a membership of over half a million men, women and teens, providing a 12-Step program of recovery for friends and family members of alcoholics. Al-Anon was formed in 1951 by Lois Wilson, wife of AA co-founder Bill Wilson. She recognized the need for Al-Anon as family members living with AA members began to identify their own pathologies associated with the family disease of alcoholism.

Alateen, which branched off in 1957, is similar to Al-Anon, but is specifically for young people (ages 12 to 20).

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Enterhealth creates individualized alcohol addiction treatment and drug addiction rehabilitation plans because we know your unique situation calls for an effective one-of-a-kind solution.