How Are Families Impacted By Substance Abuse?
Addiction is a debilitating and life-threatening illness. It also doesn’t only affect the person actively abusing substances. Everyone around them—parents, grandparents, children, and extended family members—are impacted by the trauma of one person’s struggle with substance abuse. But healing is possible. By relying on the special bonds that tie a family and getting appropriate therapeutic help, they can come together to help their family member deal with their substance use disorder.
The effects on children
Substance abuse has a ripple effect on nearly everyone around the person drinking or using drugs. Families are impacted in a variety of ways, some of which aren’t immediately recognizable. Children, parents, and extended family all experience substance abuse differently. Younger family members might feel the most long-term effects since they aren’t yet fully mature and are still growing emotionally and intellectually. Young children can experience developmental delays due to their emotional distress and chaotic home life. They also form insecure attachments to their adult caregivers, which will negatively affect how they form relationships as they mature. Teens can experience a role reversal, in which they care for the addicted adult in their family and don’t get to experience childhood.
Addiction causes trauma
Those with substance use disorder are often unpredictable. This puts everyone in the household on edge since there’s no way of knowing how they’re going to behave. Will a simple disagreement turn into a physical fight? Will any small misstep set them off? This can be physical and emotional abuse. In a chaotic environment with frequent arguments, those around the person abusing substances are in a perpetual stress response. Their bodies are flooded with the hormones that cause the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn behaviors. Everything they do is an attempt to eliminate the threat causing them distress. Down the line, this can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety, depression, and other diagnosable mental illnesses.
Family members and codependency
When there’s an addict in the family, certain diagnosable dynamics can emerge. A partner, parent, or teen might enable a person’s substance abuse in an attempt to soothe them and predict their behavior. The enabler, by taking on all the responsibilities of the household, further frees the other person to continue fueling their addiction.
Addiction’s effect on finances
Substance abuse can drain a family’s financial reserves. When a caregiving adult spends all extra income on securing the substance they’re addicted to, the family has no resources to pay for essentials like food, housing, utilities, transportation, and clothing. People sometimes lose their jobs as a result of poor performance at work due to drug addiction or alcoholism. This further fuels their money problems. Children growing up in a financially unstable home can develop trauma as a result.
Risk of more substance abuse
Those who live in a home where someone is abusing alcohol or drugs are more likely to develop substance use disorder. This can be due to both genetics and environmental factors. Children and teens especially learn to model behavior and might turn to substances to deal with their stress. This type of self-medication is dangerous and can lead to a vicious cycle of anxiety and depression, which someone then attempts to treat with substances. When gone untreated, these kinds of mental health disorders can severely impact someone’s life and lead to more harmful behaviors.
How to get help
There is no one-size-fits-all treatment plan for those with substance use disorder. Often it will involve detox, inpatient rehab, and long-term outpatient therapy. For family members, individual and family therapies are helpful. It’s important for them to learn to prioritize their own mental health. There are also community resources such as Al-Anon and Alateen to connect with others struggling in similar situations.
To learn more about how therapy can help families affected by addiction, please reach out to us for substance abuse counseling.
