Why Chemical Dependency is a Family Disease That Affects Each Family Member
Dear Dr. Steve:This is a terrible thing for a
mother to say but it’s come to the point where I don’t know what else to do. I
have agonized over this decision for the last three weeks but the time has come, either my
son gets help or out he goes. The details aren’t important but his drug use is
tearing our family apart. My marriage has been irreparably damaged. When this all started,
my husband and I were there for each other. But in the last year, it’s all we can do
to find a kind word to say to each other. He’s angry at me because he feels like what
is going on is all my fault.
As
for me personally, my emotional and physical health has deteriorated after doing
everything I can think of to keep this family from falling apart. I’m on both
anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications. I’ve been in and out of the hospital 4
times in the last two years with a bleeding ulcer and resultant complications. The days
that I’m not running around like a bat out of hell trying to do for everybody else, I
feel so depressed I can barely get out of bed in the morning. I have become so obsessed
with my son, that I’ve let the rest of my life fall apart. I stopped seeing my
friends. I stopped taking classes. I don’t know how it happened, but I wound up all
alone.
My
husband and I have put so much time and energy into my son and all of his problems that we
have nothing left to give to our two daughters and other son. As they have sensed our lack
of attention, one daughter has responded by acting out. She’s hanging out with a new
crowd of kids—a group I might add that neither my husband nor I approve of. Her
performance in school has fallen off sharply. Truancy, which was never a problem in the
past, has gotten totally out of control. Although I suppose it was only a matter of
time, a couple of months ago she actually ran away from home for two weeks.
My
other daughter has responded by withdrawing from us. She spends more time than ever by
herself in her room. She has become absolutely uncommunicative. A long conversation with
her entails three grunts, a roll of her eyes, and a groan. As for her friends, she
won’t go out with them anymore—doesn’t call them and won’t return
their calls.
On
the other hand my other son has been a lifesaver. He works so hard at school. His teachers
can’t say enough good things about him. He’s never a problem around the house.
The days that I’m struggling most, he steps right in and takes over. He helps me with
the shopping, the cooking—he even does the laundry all by himself sometimes.
But
back to my other son, I do love him. I know I’ve made my share of mistakes with him.
But the rest of my family is going down the toilet. We just can’t go on like this
anymore. What can I do?
Your
letter bears testimony to the fact that chemical dependency, whether we’re talking
about alcoholism and/or drug addiction, is a family disease. What this means in practical
terms is that nobody is immune, nobody is unaffected by family alcoholism and drug
addiction—NOBODY!
Just as
abusing alcohol and other drugs erodes the physical, behavioral, emotional, psychological,
and spiritual well-being of the user, alcohol and other drugs abuse is also toxic to the
physical, behavioral, emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being of each family
member. Why? Being raised in an environment dominated by the disease of alcoholism and
drug addiction places an enormous burden on each family member to adapt physically,
behaviorally, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually to the stress, chaos, and
insanity caused by the disease of alcoholism. The adaptations that each family member must
make may enable each family member to survive emotionally and psychologically, yet, at the
same time, these adaptations may lead to other forms of physical, emotional,
psychological, and spiritual dis-ease.
For
instance, one way for a family member to cope with the stress and chaos created by family
alcoholism is to deny that alcoholism exists in their family and, therefore, deny that
this family member has been affected by another family member’s use of drugs and
alcohol. There’s a reason that this happens. Instead of being aware of and grounded
in the reality of alcoholism and the havoc that it wreaks, a family member may become
vulnerable to having their reality misshaped and distorted by the denial system of the
alcoholic and/or the enabler. The more a family member’s perceptions are distorted by
the denial system of the alcoholic and/or the enabler, the less able that family member is
to:
1.) Accurately judge what normal is
2.) Accurately assess what is happening in a given situation
3.) Trust with any strength of conviction their perception of a given situation
4.) Assertively claim their viewpoint of a given situation
The less confident and reliant a family member is on their perceptions, the more dependent
that family member becomes on another person’s explanation for what is happening. The
more the family member’s perceptions are shaped and distorted by denial,
rationalization, blame, minimization, and deceit, the more that family member comes to
doubt themselves—what they see, think, and/or feel. The more a family member
surrenders their viewpoint of a given situation the less they come to trust their
perceptions and emotions. Because of their ever increasing distrust of what they think,
feel, and say, the family member becomes more dependent on other people’s version of
what they should think, do, say, and feel. As a result, the family member who uses denial
as a survival mechanism is 1.) Vulnerable to being manipulated by others, 2.) Less able to
assert themselves with other people, 3.) Unclear about who they are, 4.) Unsure of what
they think and feel.
Another
way for a family member to cope with the emotional turmoil caused by alcoholism and drug
addiction is to emotionally shut down or numb out. Spared from experiencing feelings such
as hopelessness, fear, shame, and despair, this family member may be emotionally insulated
from their pain but at the same time cut-off from experiencing any of their other
feelings. The more emotionally constricted one is, the less they are able to access their
whole range of feelings. This may spare the family member from being overwhelmed by
emotional pain, but, at the same time, they’re less able to feel joy, happiness, or
love. Also, without having access to their emotions, the family member is less able to
understand their choices as well as the impact that other people’s behavior has on
them. As a result, the family member who numbs out or shuts down as a way of protecting
themselves from the emotional devastation that alcoholism causes, denies themselves access
to an important part of who they are as well as an important anchor to reality. And even
more problematic is that without access to one’s feelings, a family member is unable
to discharge the inevitable build-up of internalized feelings. This leaves the family
member vulnerable to developing physical problems such as gastrointestinal distress,
emotional problems such as anxiety and depression, and interpersonal problems such as
loneliness, isolation, and fear of conflict, intimacy, and trust.
Still
another way for a family member to cope with the insanity perpetuated by alcoholism and
drug addiction is to behaviorally act out. This family member chooses acting out
behaviorally because they need a way to release the internalized feelings that they are
not permitted to express verbally. They are not permitted to express their feelings
because talking about what is happening in the family of an alcoholic is strictly
prohibited. As a result, the emotions that this family member is experiencing become
internalized and bottled up. So this particular family member is faced with a dilemma.
Since this family member chooses not to shut down or numb out emotionally but at the same
time chooses to be loyal to the don’t talk, don’t feel rules of the
alcoholic family by not talking about their feelings, how might this family member best
release and express their pent up internalized feelings such as hurt, anger, confusion,
betrayal, shame, hostility, and alienation? The family member solves this bind of not
denying feelings on one hand but not talking about what they’re feeling on the other
hand by expressing behaviorally what they are not empowered to express verbally.
Unfortunately for this family member, the way they most often choose to express their
feelings behaviorally is by acting out. Although expressing feelings behaviorally may be
essential to this family member’s mental health, such a strategy for expressing
emotions inevitably creates problems for the acting out family member. As their acting out
behavior escalates, eventually they will be in trouble at school, home, work, and/or with
the law.
Another
way to cope with family alcoholism is to withdraw from the family. Hopelessness and
helplessness make this family member feel impotent. They come to believe that there is
nothing that they can do or say to improve the situation. Feeling duped, misled, and even
betrayed by other’s broken promises and failed attempts to make a deteriorating
situation better, this family member retreats into their own world. Buoyed by the refrain,
what’s the use, this family member is convinced that there is nothing that can be
done to improve their situation at home. Unwilling to any longer trust others, not willing
to be set up for more hurt and disappointment, this family member feels safest by
withdrawing from their immediate family and friends. Unwilling to open up to anybody about
what they’re feeling, this family member may become more and more consumed by anger
and even self-hate caused by their own sense of impotence. No matter how much this family
member believes themselves to be better off by keeping to themselves, their emotional and
spiritual deterioration will escalate as they remain silently enraged, hopelessly
depressed, and forever angry at the fates that dropped this family member into this family
and this situation.
Another
way to cope with the emotional, psychological, and spiritual
dis-ease caused by alcoholism is to be overly responsible. Being overly responsible
imbues the family member with a mythical sense of control over the alcoholic, the
circumstances created by alcoholism, and the overall well-being of themselves and the
other family members. Because alcoholism is a disease about loss of control, behaving in
an overly responsible manner enables the family member to avoid feeling powerless and out
of control. Even if the overly responsible family member avoids feeling powerless and out
of control, that does not mean that their life is not engulfed by those feelings. If a
family member copes with family alcoholism by being overly responsible, they do so based
on the false belief that they can control the drinker and his drinking, the environment
and its chaos, and themselves and their emotions. But in actuality, being overly
responsible is a method of self-sabotage rather than an effective way to cope with the
disease of alcoholism.
Similar
to being overly responsible, a family member may cope with the emotional and spiritual
fall-out of family alcoholism by overachieving. Although this may seem on the surface to
be a healthy adaptation to family alcoholism, it is not without its pitfalls. If a family
member overachieves at school, at work, at home, or in sports as a way of masking core
feelings of shame, inadequacy, powerlessness, and self-hate, and as a means of avoiding
their essential humanness and all that means about having limits, then that family member
has set themselves up to believe that they are only as good as their next achievement or
accomplishment. This causes them to define themselves by what they accomplish rather than
who they are. Once their identity and self-esteem is tethered to winning the next race,
getting the next A in school, winning the next big account at work, writing the next best
seller, and/or being the best of the best, they create an emotional roller coaster ride
for themselves that leaves them imprisoned to an insatiable need for the approval and
admiration of others. Afraid to slow down long enough to feel what their feeling,
terrified of having to get to know themselves, unwilling to confront the limits of what it
means to be ordinarily human, this family member creates for themselves a life of
perpetual motion, always looking for the next mountain to climb so as to avoid having to
confront their core feelings of shame, powerlessness, inadequacy, and self-hate.
Vulnerable to the inevitable emotional lows that are experienced when the bubble of their
grandiosity pops, they become a merciless perfectionist and an unyielding taskmaster of
themselves and others in order to not have to descend into the emotional depths of shame
and self-loathing.
As I said
previously, on the surface, there’s nothing harmful about any of these strategies.
Simply put, they are survival mechanisms and to the degree that they enable a person to
not be harmed by a toxic environment, then they have served their purpose. However, as
effective as these survival strategies may be to insure the survival of each family
member, they can be very damaging to the overall physical, emotional, psychological, and
spiritual well-being of each family member. For oftentimes, these survival mechanisms
become inflexible and maladaptive. Instead of being mechanisms to survive the insanity of
family alcoholism, family members may begin to (mis)apply these survival mechanisms to
circumstances of their life that have nothing to do with family alcoholism. When these
survival mechanisms are rigidly used, inflexibly applied, and (mis)applied to
circumstances that require a wider range of coping mechanisms, the family member will
begin to sabotage their emotional and spiritual well-being. That is because once these
survival mechanisms become rigid and habitualized, they usurp the family member’s
free will. This means that the family member has less and less choice about the use of
coping mechanisms that are appropriate to the specific situation rather than their
survival mechanisms. As a result of this, fear-based, habituated means of avoidance
replaces thoughtful, flexible responses to life’s circumstances. Sadly, when these
survival mechanisms are applied by a family to developmental milestones, personal
obstacles, the development of friendships and emotionally intimate relationships,
spiritual development, and educational, recreational, and occupational challenges these
survival mechanisms become a means of self-sabotage rather than tools for emotional and
spiritual well-being.
That
explains how chemical dependency, whether it is alcoholism or drug addiction, is a family
disease. When the disease of chemical dependency is active in a family, each family member
must adapt to its presence. Most family members adapt to the presence of chemical
dependency by developing survival mechanisms as a way of coping with the toxic fallout of
chemical dependency. These survival mechanisms are wonderfully adaptive to the stressors
created by the existence of chemical dependency, however the potential exists for these
survival mechanisms to become maladaptive if they become rigid, constricted roles by which
a family member chooses to live their life.
No matter
how much pain your family is in, it takes a lot of courage to take the stand you are about
to take with your son! You and your husband are to be congratulated for beginning to take
some action that will protect the well-being of your whole family! Let me give you an idea
of what to consider doing for you and your family.
You
can contact Al-Anon at:
Al-Anon
Family Group Headquarters, Inc.
1600 Corporate Landing Parkway
Virginia Beach, Va. 23454
Tel # 757-563-1600
Fax # 757-563-1655
www.al-anon.alateen.org
1-888-425-2666 for meeting information
Monday-Friday, 8am to 6 pm ET except holidays
You can contact Alateen at Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc.:
Al-Anon
Family Group Headquarters, Inc.
1600 Corporate Landing Parkway
Virginia Beach, Va. 23454
Tel # 757-563-1600
Fax # 757-563-1655
www.al-anon.alateen.org
1-888-425-2666 for meeting information
Monday-Friday, 8am to 6 pm ET except holidays
Recover
from chemical dependency and its toxic impact on family members. Raise your children to
choose to be alcohol and other drugs free. Learn how to in Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D.
Recovery book series—From Insanity to Serenity.
Pathfinder’s Checklist
1.) Contact a qualified healthcare professional who can help you assess your situation and
evaluate what treatment approaches are available for your whole family.
2.) Encourage your children to talk to you and your husband about their feelings.
3.) Attend Al-Anon and Alateen meetings.
4.) Learn more about alcoholism and drug addiction.
5.) Develop the skills necessary to cope with your son’s alcohol and drug use.
6.) Work with a qualified therapist to help you and your family better understand the
personal issues that have arisen as a result of living in an environment affected by
alcoholism and drug addiction.
7.) Slowly but surely repair your marriage.
G.B.U.
Steve
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