One parent’s addiction affects everyone. Children sometimes have to parent themselves and/or their own mother or father. The added stresses may cause anxiety, guilt, loneliness and disruptive behavior, and may lead them into an addiction. There are many challenges throughout the recovery process, but with success their children will benefit, too.

Experts in the field of drug and alcohol abuse are finding that a family’s recovery from addiction may take longer than previously thought. All of the ripples of anger, frustration, and troubled emotions that touched children and spouses can take three to five years to heal. A 1999 study called The Family Recovery Project, by Drs. Brown and Lewis, aimed to describe this developmental recovery process for families.

Fifty-four families, with lengths of recovery from two months to 20 years, were interviewed. From this study, Brown and Lewis presented four stages of recovery from addiction and their impact on parenting and the overall family.

• Stage 1: Active Alcohol or Other Drug Use
  This stage is when parents are in the midst of their addiction. Their impairment directly causes interruption to family’s daily life. A hangover might prevent them from getting their children to school and cause embarrassment and punishment for their child. Violence and verbal abuse might cause fear or isolation.At this stage it may be difficult to share “family time.” Probation and parole might keep one or both parents away from home for extended periods of time. Family dinners may be interrupted by a parent who was too impaired to fix dinner or join the family at the table. This physical lack of presence induces emotional abandonment and insecurity in children.Parents who are mentally impaired have difficulty helping a child with homework or sitting down and talking with them about school or friend concerns. This parental involvement is crucial in decreasing the risk that their child will also turn to alcohol or substance abuse.

  Providing alternative social interactions for children at this stage aids them in finding other adult role models and alternatives for healthy interaction. Sports, school clubs, and keeping connected with outside family members and friends are important to keep them from feeling isolated.

• Stage 2: Transition to Recovery
  For many families, this stage is more difficult on children than the first stage. This period is marked by a traumatic event, such as involvement in crime or hospitalization due to abuse. While the parent focuses intensely on recovery, children may feel lonely and insecure as their parent is absent.

• Stage 3: Early Recovery
  In this stage, parents transform back to their non-addictive selves and reflect on positive changes. The entire family experiences a calming effect after the trauma of transition. During this stage, children still may feel emotionally separated from their parent as they focus on their own personal recovery. Any reassurance of security and love by friends and family will help the child feel more emotionally calmed and connected.

• Stage 4: Ongoing Recovery
  At this stage, parents are able to release some of their self-focus and focus again on their children. As they slowly get to know their child’s routines and personality, they can share more with them.

Parents face child-rearing challenges during ongoing recovery. They must learn to set rules and discipline their children with firmness and compassion so that the child once again has a strong role model. Because of guilty feelings, some parents go to the other extreme and give in to the whims of their child, but limitations will help them feel stable again.

Parents will need to rebuild a level of trust with their child. Simple acts like getting a child to school on time or attending their play or sports event will help re-build these levels. Sharing family meals and activities will reassure that your absences will be less frequent than before.

Modifying parent behavior throughout the addiction recovery process is the key to helping the entire family recover from the addiction. Becoming a better parent will help speed recovery and make each transition toward healing easier. Parents who were once addicted can turn that negative into a positive. The lessons they learn in recovery can be life lessons in discipline, abstinence, courage, and growth that they can pass along to their children.

Where did they learn these behaviors? Negative influences at school, a teacher or coach, their friends’ parents? If your drinking is out of control, there’s a good chance they learned it from you.

Drinking changes the way a parent functions at work and at home, creating an unstable and unsupportive environment. Children who grow up with an alcoholic parent are at a disadvantage in life from early on, often exhibiting the following problems:

1. Greater Risk of Addiction

Life is hard enough for youth – adding an alcoholic parent into the mix can be profoundly scarring. Not surprisingly, many children of alcoholics follow their parent’s example and seek refuge in the bottle. Children of alcoholics are at four times greater risk than other children of becoming alcoholics themselves, and as many as 50 percent will end up marrying someone with a drinking problem.

2. Neglect or Abuse

When a parent has a drinking problem, they are more likely to be abusive or neglectful toward their children. While some alcoholics drink themselves into a quiet stupor, others become aggressive or violent. Studies show that as many as 90 percent of child abuse cases involve at least one alcoholic parent. Instead of focusing on being there for their child, they are seeking out and consuming alcohol, often along with other drugs.

3. Guilt

Many children of alcoholics feel responsible for their mother or father’s drinking problem. They may try to hide or get rid of alcohol around the house, and feel guilty that they can’t make their parent stop drinking. A parent in denial may even blame their child for the problem to avoid facing their alcohol addiction.

Some kids also struggle with the guilt of keeping their parent’s alcoholism hidden from friends, teachers, and other people in their lives. Even as they are taught that keeping secrets is wrong, they are living a double life in an effort to protect their family.

4. Anxiety

Even in dysfunctional families, children love their parents and care about their health and happiness. Children of alcoholics may be plagued by anxiety, constantly worrying about their home life, the health of the parent, and the constant tension and fighting that often permeate alcoholic homes. The stress may cause young children to struggle with bed wetting, nightmares, and frequent crying, along with more health complaints and doctor’s visits later in life.

5. Relationship Problems

If a child can’t trust their parents, they are apt to go through life wondering if they can truly rely on anyone. As a result, the child may shy away from friendships and intimacy, preferring to be alone instead. Who would want to risk bringing a friend home to a drunk and belligerent parent? Or opening their heart to someone only to be hurt again?

6. Unpredictable Routine

Child development experts are continually reiterating the importance of structure and routine in children’s lives. When a parent has a drinking problem, they are likely more focused on finding the next opportunity to drink than maintaining regular eating and sleeping patterns. To add to the inconsistency, their children may be constantly guessing at whether mom or dad will be loving and apologetic, or angry and agitated.

7. Anger

Life isn’t always fair, but that isn’t a lesson children should learn early in life or in what should be the safety and comfort of home. When children grow up with an alcoholic parent, they understandably feel angry – not only with the parent for drinking too much, being inconsistent, and breaking promises, but also at other family members for being powerless to stop it. Some may be resentful for having to care for their siblings as well as their parent and themselves.

If a child feels unsafe or unloved, their anger may manifest inwardly, through such behaviors as self-harm or an eating disorder, or outwardly through fighting at school, bullying, or damaging property. Risk-taking behaviors such as drug or alcohol abuse, risky sexual behavior, and stealing are also more common among children of alcoholics.

8. Depression

Adults often feel powerless to stop someone from drinking, so one can imagine how helpless a child of an alcoholic parent may feel. What starts as feelings of worthlessness, loneliness, and sadness may escalate into major depression or suicidal thoughts later in life.

9. Perfectionism

While some children rebel against their alcoholic parent, others act out by taking on the role of parent. They may become excessively controlled and put pressure on themselves and others to overachieve. While this may result in school and career success, they often find that true happiness is elusive. Underlying emotional problems and resentment may surface in adulthood when the child realizes they were robbed of an authentic childhood.

10. Academic Problems

Studies show that children of an alcoholic parent tend to score lower on reading, verbal, and math tests. Low self-confidence, difficulty with communication and self-expression, and low parental expectations may be to blame.

Children dealing with strong emotions, such as anger, embarrassment, and sadness may find it difficult to concentrate in school. If their parents aren’t conveying the importance of education at home, children may lose motivation and begin skipping classes or failing at school. Some may even do so in an effort to get the attention they need from their parent.

You Are Not Alone

Parents who drink are often blind to the dysfunctional home they’ve created. Or you may understand the harm you’re doing, but feel powerless to stop drinking.

Children need their parents to be positive role models who are supportive, trustworthy, and emotionally available. While in the past you may not have been the parent you want to be, life is full of second chances. Encourage your child to get involved in counseling and support groups such as Alateen, and get help for yourself from an alcohol treatment program.

Research has shown that kids who start drinking before age 15 are five times more likely to develop alcohol-related problems later in life, so it’s important to inform kids that delaying their first drink can impact the rest of their lives.

Shirley Malcom, the director of Education and Human Resources programs for AAAS, said the book underscores the importance of paying more attention to the risks of early drinking, as many people only worry about high school students drinking because it is often combined with driving. But kids as young as 10 are drinking, which can lead to many problems later in life, including risky behavior and poor school performance.

The authors hope the book will raise awareness among those who interact with kids about the effects that alcohol can have on the still-developing brain. Alcohol can affect all parts of the body and brain, including the heart, liver, digestive system, and other organs.

AAAS interviewed seventh graders from different middle schools in the northeastern U.S., and responses from 143 students showed that they knew very little about the science behind alcohol and how it affects the body and brain. About half of the students didn’t know how alcohol is made, and about one-third didn’t know which body systems are affected by alcohol.

Malcom said the book will be available to be incorporated into school curricula, but it is mostly intended as a guide for parents. She added that being preachy about alcohol and forbidding certain behaviors may not work, whereas this approach shows kids exactly how alcohol affects them.

Written by Aimee Stern of Stern Communications in Silver Spring, Maryland, with the help of an advisory board of alcohol abuse specialists, the book is available online at: http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/alcohol/parents/book-final.pdf. At a meeting of the International Conference of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous, Stern met many people who started drinking in middle school or their first year in high school.

Rebecca Kullback, an adviser for the book and a licensed clinical social worker and co-founder of Metropolitan Counseling Associates in Bethesda, Maryland, said that most young students believe that bad things happen to other people, tending to minimize the perception of risks in their own behaviors. She said that the new book gives parents an opportunity to teach their kids about the dangers of alcohol abuse in a relevant way. She added that the older people are when they take their first drink, the less likely they are to have substance abuse problems.

The book encourages parents to start talking to kids about substance abuse in fourth grade and continue talking to them though middle school and high school. Parents should also pay attention to other factors such as advertising, pop culture, and certain Internet sites, which can promote drinking.

Source: American Association for the Advancement of Science, New from AAAS: A guide for parents on talking to kids about alcohol, September 22, 2010

Let’s take the mystery out of it. Here are some tips on how you can best support an addict – whether it’s your son or daughter that’s hooked on illicit drugs, your wife or husband who’s been abusing alcohol and cocaine, even your elderly parents who are addicted to prescription painkillers.

Educate Yourselves

You can’t be much help or support to an addict if you’re in the dark about his or her disease. The first step in supporting the addict is to learn as much as you can about alcoholism, substance abuse, co-occurring substance abuse and mental health disorder, process addictions like compulsive gambling, sex and shopping, overwork, and eating disorders.

One thing you’ll learn right away is that the addict can’t help him or herself. It’s not a switch that can be turned off easily. In fact, after months and years of chronic abuse, the human brain is changed to the point where the individual is rewired, so to speak, to an obsessive and compulsive need for the substance (or compulsive behavior).

Be exhaustive in your research. Look up everything you can online. Buy or borrow from the library books on the subject. Study the materials until you feel you have a good grounding in the particular addiction.

Does the Addict Want to Change?

A key determination in how you support an addict involves the person’s willingness and desire to change. If he or she is adamantly against giving up the addiction, there’s nothing you can do to change that. This is a decision that has to come from the addict.

You can, if things get really out of control, arrange for an intervention. This is a process, conducted by trained interventionists, where the addict is confronted by family and friends and, led by the interventionist, encouraged to enter treatment. The desired result is that the addict agrees to go into treatment, and is immediately whisked off by the interventionist to pre-arranged treatment at a residential addiction treatment or rehab facility. Sometimes, however, the addict refuses help. It’s just not the right time, and he or she is simply not receptive to receiving help.

The fact is that, if your loved one is 18 or older, he or she cannot be forced into treatment, unless it is ordered by the court, usually as part of a sentence.

If the addict expresses a desire to change, this is where you can spring into action. Now, all your research will come into play. If you haven’t already, it’s time to check out available treatment programs.

Treatment Options

For many families, money is tight. That should never stand in the way of getting the best treatment available for your loved one. There are financing options, financial assistance in the form of pay-as-you-go, sliding-pay scale, or scholarships or grants that may be available. Federal, state, and local financial assistance may also be possible.

During your research into the disease of addiction and, specifically, the type of addiction your loved one suffers from, you undoubtedly came across websites for residential treatment faciities. This is one way to go.

Another is to check out the Treatment Facility Locator (http://dasis3.samhsa.gov/), sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). This is a searchable database of more than 11,000 drug and alcohol addiction treatment programs around the country. The locator listings include residential treatment centers, outpatient treatment programs, and hospital inpatient programs for drug addiction and alcoholism. There are listings and treatment programs in the locator for marijuana, cocaine, and heroin addiction, as well as alcohol and drug treatment programs for adults and adolescents. You can also call their toll-free treatment referral helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.

An excellent resource, the Treatment Facility Locator offers the ability for you to find facilities that take clients with no insurance coverage. Use Detailed Search or List Search and check the boxes for “sliding fee scale” and “payment assistance.” Then call the facilities directly to determine their policy.

While you’re checking out facilities that are near where you live, be sure to compare their primary focus, services they provide, type of care (residential short-term treatment of 30 days or less, residential long-term treatment beyond 30 days, outpatient, partial hospitalization/day treatment, etc., special programs/groups (such as co-occurring substance abuse and mental disorders, persons with HIV/AIDS, gays, lesbians, women, men, seniors, adolescents, etc.), and special language services.

Find several that seem appropriate or that you’d like to explore further. Then, check out their websites or contact the facility directly. All the pertinent information is listed in the locator.

Armed with this information, you’ll be better prepared if your loved one says he or she is ready to go into treatment. Your support and encouragment is crucial in helping your loved one take the next step.

When the Addict Goes Into Treatment

Just because your loved one goes into treatment, that’s not the end of your support. Rather, it’s just the beginning. During his or her treatment program, continue to learn as much as you can about the disease.

If family treatment is part of your loved one’s treatment plan, take part in it. That’s because addiction affects each and every member of the family. Your loved one can’t go through treatment and return home to the same situation and circumstances which may have exacerbated or enabled addiction in the first place. Yes, family treatment is usually an extra-cost service, but it is well worth it to give your loved one the best chance possible at successful recovery.

Many times there are other family members who also abuse certain substances. Alcohol and drug abuse in the home, if it continues, will almost definitely result in your loved one’s relapse sooner rather than later following completion of treatment. So, if there are other problems with substance abuse or compulsive behavior, you need to get these taken care of before your loved one returns home.

When its appropriate and your loved one’s therapist recommends it, be sure to visit him or her during treatment. The early phase of active treatment is the roughest. That’s when he or she will beg you to allow them to come home. Be loving but firm and insist that treatment be completed. Your loved one may rail against you, calling you names, shouting that you don’t care – but that’s all the addiction talking. It takes time for behavior to change. Simply getting detoxed won’t cut it. Without counseling and group meetings to learn coping techniques and therapy to change ingrained behavior, coming home prematurely will do nothing to help your loved one overcome addiction.

Preparations for Homecoming

While your loved one is in the final phase of treatment, he or she is creating a recovery plan with the help of the therapist. Now is the time for you to get the house ready for your loved one’s return.

This means you need to ensure the house is “clean,” – free of all alcohol and drugs.

Be ready for a change of schedules as well, since the addict, once home, will need to attend further counseling (if required) and participate in regular 12-step meetings such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Marijuana Anonymous, Workaholics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, and so on.

Things won’t go back to the way they were. That’s the last thing you – or your loved one – should expect or want. Life in recovery will be different. It has to be, in order for it to be effective.

Plan for this, and do so with an open mind and heart, and a willingness to be supportive and encouraging from here on out.

Understand that there will be good days and bad days. Some days, your loved one may seem to sail along with no problems. Other days, a crisis at work or school or home – whether major or minor – will seem to completely derail your loved one. It’s at this time when he or she will need not only your support, but that of his or her 12-step sponsor and network.

Get Involved

Think this is all too much for you to handle? That’s a normal reaction. Addiction is a complex disease, and everyone involved with the addict goes through a lot. You need help and support as well. Fortunately, there are family component groups of the various 12-step groups that offer just such support.

Join one. First, check them out. There may be several different meeting locations. Experts advise that you visit several, but give a group at least six visits before you make up your mind that it’s not for you.

What kind of meetings are these? They’re for the family members and close friends of addicts. There’s Co-Anon, for family members of addicts; Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA); Nar-Anon, for friends and family members of addicts; Al-Anon/Alateen, for friends and family members of alcoholics; Families Anonymous, for friends and family of addicts; Gam-Anon/Gam-A-Teen, for friends and family members of problem gamblers, and so on.

What happens at these meetings? Let’s take Co-Anon, for example. Co-Anon Family Groups are a fellowship of men and women who are husbands and wives, parents, relatives, or close friends of someone who is chemically dependent. If you are seeking a solution to problems that come from living with a practicing or recovering cocaine addict, Co-Anon can help you. Other 12-step family groups are similar. Members support and help each other by sharing their experiences, wisdom, and strength. Through weekly meetings, members educate themselves and learn new and appropriate methods of dealing with their friend or loved one who is an addict.

Best advice is to find a 12-step family group that works for you, that feels right, and that you can commit to attending. You will find that the encouragement, unswerving support, and fellowship you receive at these meetings will help you immensely. There is no burden so heavy that it cannot be lifted through the support of your fellow 12-step family group members. Just listening to others talk about their issues, challenges, and successes will spark ideas for ways that you can tackle your own.

Give it Time

It may be painful to realize, but it’s important to understand that the healing process that your loved one began in treatment will take some time. For some in recovery, it may take many months or years, while others may quickly come up to speed and fall into the rhythm of meetings and self-care.

Of course, there is no black and white, no one scenario that fits everyone in recovery. Your loved one may go along fine for a while and then suffer relapse. Or, he or she may have problems adjusting right from the start. In any case, your ongoing love and support will be crucial in helping your loved one navigate the early days of recovery.

Don’t forget yourself in the process. You need to take care of your physical and emotional needs as well. Make sure you get adequate rest, eat nutritious and well-balanced meals, get plenty of exercise. Go out and have a good time with your friends. Take trips. Do things together with the family. Recovery doesn’t mean that you need to subject yourself and others in the family to endless drudgery, self-deprivation, and repetitive tasks.

The Future in Recovery

Recovery – for your loved one and for the family – is what you make it. Encourage your loved one to pursue dreams, to create short- and long-term goals in support of those dreams. Make sure he or she knows that you will always be there for him or her. Your love is not conditional to any timetable or achievement. You want what is best and right for your loved one – the opportunity to enjoy life, to love and be loved, to be happy and healthy and prosperous in sobriety.
How do you support an addict? Hopefully now you have a better idea.
 

Some family members of alcoholics will experience insomnia, headaches, weight loss, bouts of anxiety or irritability and mood swings. They often feel they have lost control of the family situation and may even deny that they are suffering – similar to feelings many alcoholics themselves experience.

Physical, mental and emotional effects for family members of alcoholics can vary, but experts agree that professional therapy, either in an individual or group setting, may be essential for helping family members cope.

A family involved with alcoholism can be embedded with conflicting emotions, especially if the drinker has stopped or attempted to stop. Other families may hold on to a past that involves alcoholics of previous generations, carrying the emotional baggage to the next generation.

In another common situation, a family who has not experienced alcoholism finds itself with a family member who has become addicted – thus putting children at risk for also abusing alcohol. Some sources report that if a child lives with a parent who is an alcoholic, the child has a 34 percent higher chance of falling into the same pattern, in comparison with children who live with parents who don’t abuse alcohol.

Adults who grow up in alcoholic homes may have problems with depression and maintaining healthy relationships. They may have difficulty trusting people or show impulsive behaviors. Feelings of poor self-esteem may also be evident. For children, lifelong feelings of shame or guilt may develop as a result of living with an alcoholic parent.

Al-Anon is a part of Alcoholics Anonymous and features a 12-Step program for helping friends and family members of alcoholics. The group may be able to help families curb their desire to reclaim their loved one’s recovery themselves, and help them realize they may not be able to control a family member’s addiction.

During group meetings, the focus typically remains on sharing feelings and thoughts about the addiction. Belonging to the group can help ease feelings of being alone and help people work through harmful perspectives about their loved one’s disease. Some groups strive to shift the focus toward the person who loves the alcoholic, rather than just the alcoholic themselves.

Anti-depressants may be prescribed for some family members coping with an alcoholic, and a physical evaluation under a doctor’s care may also be needed to help diagnose other health problems. For many, the knowledge and understanding that alcoholism is a disease – not merely a behavior – is helpful.

Treatment for alcoholics, and their family members, must often be multi-faceted and ongoing to work through the negative emotions that remain long after the addiction has been conquered.

The study, which will be published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, looked at the influence of delinquency among more than 800 children and young adults between the ages of 10 and 24 from low and middle-income backgrounds. Participants were asked to answer questions about delinquency, alcohol use, and sexual activity in late childhood; alcohol use and delinquency in adolescence; and crime, alcohol use disorders, and risky sex behaviors in early adulthood.

The researchers found that youth from low-income families were two times more likely to report having sex by age 11 and participating in delinquent behaviors by age 10 than youth from middle-income families. However, those from middle-income backgrounds were 1.5 times more likely to report drinking alcohol by age 10 than those from low-income families.

Youth that reported early sex, delinquency, and alcohol use in late childhood through adolescence were more likely to report crime, alcohol use disorders, and risky sex in young adulthood.

W. Alex Mason, Ph.D., lead author of the study, said that crime, alcohol use disorders, and risky sex behaviors threaten the health and well-being of young people, and that the behaviors usually start in adolescence. Dr. Mason added that problem behaviors such as delinquency and alcohol use in childhood and adolescence are early warning signs that should be addressed by an intervention so that the behaviors don’t progress.

Source: Science Daily, Disadvantaged Adolescents Prone to Adult Crime and Substance Abuse Problems, Study Finds, August 16, 2010

However, when it comes to treatment, those struggling with alcohol use disorder are sometimes in treatment in isolation from their social networks. When treatment is completed, the recovered individuals struggle to stay on track with their newly acquired behaviors in an environment that has remained the same.

A study at a treatment facility in India examined whether family members involvement in relapse prevention would improve the individual’s success in remaining sober. The study was conducted by Prasanthi Nattala, Kit Sang Leung, Nagarajaiah and Pratima Muthy.

The researchers sought to examine whether the involvement of family members in treatment of alcohol-dependent individuals would alter the outcomes. They also wanted to test the factors associated with relapse when the participants were evaluated at a 6-month follow-up period.

The study recruited 90 male participants who were enrolled in an inpatient program at a facility in India. Each participant had been admitted for 3 weeks. The participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: individual relapse prevention (IRP), dyadic relapse prevention (DRP), and treatment as usual (TAU). There were 30 participants in each group.

In the IRP group, the individual participant received intervention, while in the DRP group both the participant and a family member were included in the intervention. In all three groups, the family members stayed in the facility with the participants. After six months from the patient’s discharge from the treatment facility, the participants were recruited for a follow-up investigation.

The DRP group participants consistently showed better results than those in the TAU group on all of the outcomes, such as reduction in quantity of alcohol, drinking days, and number of days with dysfunction in family, occupational and financial dimensions.

In addition, the DRP group performed better when compared with the IRP group. DRP showed significant reduction in the quantity of alcohol, drinking days and family problems when compared with IRP. The researchers used Cox regression to show that being the IRP or TAU groups, an early onset of dependence and a paternal history of alcohol use disorder were predictors of relapse after adjusting for baseline alcohol use.

The study’s findings show the important of family “buy-in” when an individual enters treatment for alcohol use disorder. The involvement of a family member helps ensure that an individual will be successful in avoiding relapse.
 

The researchers specifically looked at whether parents knew where their children were and with whom (accountability), and the level of warmth they shared with their children.

They found that teens whose parents scored high on both accountability and warmth were less likely to drink heavily; those whose parents scored high on warmth but low on accountability were three times more likely to drink heavily; and those whose parents scored high on accountability but low on warmth were two times more likely to drink heavily.

Unlike prior research, this study distinguished between merely trying alcohol and drinking heavily. Stephen Bahr, a professor in BYU’s College of Family, Home and Social Sciences, and co-author John Hoffmann will publish their study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs in July.

The study also found that religious teens were significantly less likely to drink any alcohol, which mirrors findings from the study they conducted in 2008 on teen marijuana use.

The researchers note that the teens in their new study were more likely to be friends with people who didn’t drink if their parents scored high on both warmth and accountability.
Bahr explained that because adolescents is a transitional period, parents sometimes have a hard time navigating through it. While peers are very important in influencing teens, parents also play an important role.

The researchers want parents to know that they need to have both accountability and support in their relationship with their teens. Don’t just try to control their behavior—combine knowing where they are with a loving relationship.

Source: Science Daily, Teens and Alcohol Study: After a Few Drinks, Parenting Style Kicks in, June 25, 2010

If you have a loved one with an addiction problem, you know that they aren’t the only one suffering. In a family struggling with addiction, every family member is affected in some way. Needs are not being met, relationships become strained, and everyone is in danger of adopting maladaptive coping mechanisms that can have long-lasting consequences. There is no simple fix for addiction. It is an insidious disorder that finds its way into every aspect of a person’s life, and successful long-term recovery requires addressing all of these aspects. Addiction impacts the entire family, and the most successful recovery provides everyone with the chance to heal—not just the addicted individual.

An Addict in the Family
When an individual is suffering from an addiction, it throws their entire family into upheaval. Family members often focus on the addict, believing that everything would be fine if only they could “fix” the addicted individual. But the truth is that the addict is responsible for their own recovery, and the addict’s family members are responsible for theirs. Although there are important ways you as a family member can help your addicted loved one, you can’t change them; you can, however, change yourself.

By definition, an individual who is addicted to a substance or behavior is driven to continue despite negative life consequences. These consequences commonly include financial difficulties, health problems, and neglected relationships; addicts sometimes cope with these problems by resorting to lying, violence, denial, or absence. For family members, these actions lead to a number of complex emotions that won’t simply disappear if their loved one receives addiction treatment. Trust has been broken, intimacy has been lost, and in some cases financial ruin is imminent. These are serious issues that result in feelings of anger, resentment, fear, and loneliness for family members of addicts.

As a family member of an individual suffering from addiction, addressing these issues helps both you and your loved one heal. If the addict is in recovery, he or she is working hard to address all aspects of their addiction—and many of those aspects also have an impact on family members. Involvement in patient and family support groups has been shown to be an important component of successful addiction treatment. Even if your loved one is not receiving addiction treatment, family recovery can still offer your family the chance to heal and become a strong support structure for a struggling addict.

Family Therapy Options
Choosing to take part in family therapy is an important step in the recovery process. Some types of family therapy are primarily educational, helping you to understand the disease of addiction. These programs offer classes, discussions, lectures, activities, and/or group meetings to help family members of addicts develop a deeper understanding of the causes, effects, and treatment of addiction. Other options for family therapy are counseling for the family or couples or participation in a support group for family members of addicts. While a particular program may focus mostly on one of these aspects, many include some level of educational, counseling, and supportive assistance.

Al-Anon is a well-known and widely available family recovery resource, dedicated to supporting family and friends of alcoholics. Founded over 55 years ago, Al-Anon is a free group where members can share their personal experiences with others who have lived with and loved an alcoholic. Although Al-Anon was established and designed for family and friends of practicing and recovering alcoholics, many loved ones of people suffering from substance abuse also participate.

Al-Anon offers a recovery program designed specifically for younger family members, called Alateen. Much like Al-Anon, Alateen offers free meetings, literature, and support to older children and adolescents who have a family member or close friend who is suffering from an addiction problem. Although the focus is on alcohol addiction, family members of people who abuse other substances may also participate in Alateen. Young people in Alateen learn about the three C’s of a family member’s addiction: You didn’t Cause it, you can’t Control it, and you can’t Cure it.

Nar-Anon is an option for family and friends of drug users. Similarly to Al-Anon, Nar-Anon is a free support group available to anyone affected by a relative or friend’s addiction. It is a Twelve-Step program that offers peer support and literature on addiction.

Other groups that offer family recovery services include the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (NACoA), Adult Children of Alcoholics, Co-Dependents Anonymous (CoDA), and SMART Recovery. In addition, your local community may offer support groups for family and friends of addicts, perhaps through a community center or church. Other options are psychologists or counselors who specialize in addiction recovery—you can arrange to meet individually, as a family group, or both. Finally, if your loved one is in addiction treatment, their program may provide and even encourage family recovery services.

Even if only one member of a family is an addict, addiction causes all family members to suffer. Receiving family therapy provides every family member with the chance to recover from the effects of addiction and build a stronger family unit. Recovering as a family allows healing, encourages forward movement, and provides the recovering addict with a support structure that is essential to his or her success.
 

Make Time for a Discussion

Just as you schedule a family get-together or birthday celebration, or a trip to the hairdresser or time on the golf course, carve out sufficient time in the family schedule so that both parents can sit down with the graduating teen for an in-depth discussion about alcohol.

It’s important that this scheduled date not be interrupted by outside distractions. Turn off the cell phone and put away pagers, Blackberry devices. No Internet connections should be open for emails, no TV or stereo playing in the background. This should also be a private conversation that you have with your teen. It is best if other younger children are not present as well, in order to maximize the opportunity to have your teen’s full attention. You will be discussing things in terms that may not be appropriate for younger children. Even though messages about alcohol and its use not allowed in the family are suitable for family conversation, this is not the time to do that.

Be sure your graduating teen knows that you will be having an important discussion about alcohol, and it is mandatory. Beyond saying that, don’t go into it any further until the time of the meeting. You will need the time to do your research and get prepared.

Research Everything You Can on Alcohol

Many adults think they know enough about alcohol to have a frank discussion with their teens about its dangers. They often pepper the conversation with statements like, “When I was your age, I…” This is a definite turn-off to teens, however, since no teen wants to hear what it was like in the old days. They feel superior, like you’re over the hill or, worse yet, you don’t get how they can take care of themselves.

To combat this, you need to know a lot more about the subject than your teen ever could. Good places to start include the following websites:

• Teen Alcohol Abuse, located at http://www.teenalcoholabuse.us/content/alcohol-abuse-statistics-facts.html

• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Alcohol Research and Health

• NIAAA Spectrum, Drinking Too Much Can Kill You Quickly…or Slowly

• National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Alcohol

• Above the Influence, Facts on Alcohol

• Mayo Clinic, Tween and Teen Health, Teen Drinking: Talk to your teen about alcohol

• Teen Drug Abuse

What to Discuss

Outside of flatly forbidding your teen to drink anything on prom night – which you won’t be able to monitor anyway – a better strategy is to begin your discussion with what could happen if your teen drinks before, during, and/or after prom. Here are some things to bring up, along with the rationale behind them. Use your own words when talking about each one with your teen – and back it up with facts and statistics you accumulate in your research.

• It’s a special event – and alcohol could make you forget it. Teens plan for prom night for weeks and months in advance. They have to have just the right dress or outfit, know who’s having what parties and which ones to attend in what order, whether or not there’ll be a limousine and how many are invited, where’s the best place for dinner, and on and on. Parents can use this excitement and pre-planning to their advantage. Let your teen know that you’ve seen how happy they’ve been making plans for prom, and you’re happy for them. You want them to get everything out of it that they possibly can, so that it is a truly memorable experience that will be with them for a lifetime. Explain that drinking alcohol – even a small amount – can interfere with or obliterate their recollection of prom night. That’s because the hippocampus – the area of the brain that controls memory – is still in the maturation process in teens. Alcoholic consumption can wipe out part or all of those memories, especially if there is a black-out due to binge drinking (consumption of 5 or more drinks on a single occasion) and alcohol intoxication.

• Alcohol could make you sick. Movies about teens and parties with alcohol consumption have shown the effects of drinking too much too fast. The image of vomiting all over a prom dress or rented tuxedo isn’t one that is very appealing. Besides the nausea, there’s dizziness to contend with. The room will seem to be spinning and balance will be lost as the equilibrium is thrown out of whack by the effects of alcohol. Instead of dancing the night away or laughing with friends, your teen may be sick on the sidelines – and become the joke of his or her friends. Beyond these mild effects, there are other more serious consequences to drinking. Alcohol irritates the stomach. In fact, it’s this irritation that leads to the dehydration and vomiting already mentioned. Drinking too much alcohol too fast (called binge drinking) can also lead to alcohol poisoning, a serious condition that causes the body’s systems to break down. Alcohol poisoning requires immediate medical attention.

• You may do things you don’t want to do if you drink alcohol. Alcohol is a depressant, which lowers inhibitions and results in sometimes very inappropriate and/or risky behavior. Unprotected teenage sex and driving while drunk are two examples of things that can go wrong as a result of drinking on prom night. Planning and decision-making are controlled by the brain’s prefrontal cortex – another area that doesn’t mature until the mid-to-late 20s. The consumption of alcohol can interfere with your teen’s ability to weigh and balance what to do instead of just going ahead and doing something because others are doing it, or it feels good, or just because the alcohol makes them feel happy and invulnerable. Alcohol robs teens of the ability to see alternatives to inappropriate and/or risky behavior.

• You may be involved in fights because of alcohol. Violent behavior is a frequent accompaniment to drinking too much alcohol. Researchers have found that alcohol may encourage violence or aggression by disrupting normal brain functioning. Alcohol does this by weakening the brain mechanisms that normally restrain impulsive behaviors – including aggression. Alcohol also impairs brain processing, resulting in the misreading of social cues. Your teen may misinterpret a look or a gesture as threatening, and act in a violent or aggressive manner as a means of self-protection or protection of others (prom date). In addition, the narrowing of the attention span means your teen won’t be able to see ahead to the possible consequences of getting into a fight after drinking alcohol.

• Drinking and driving is illegal and can land you in jail or worse. Every state has a zero-tolerance law on teenage (any youth under the age of 21) drinking and driving. That means that having any measurable amount of alcohol on your teen’s breath is a violation of the law. Of the estimated 5,000 annual deaths resulting from underage drinking, nearly 2,000 are from motor vehicle crashes. Your teen needs to hear from you that there is no permissible circumstance for them to drink and drive – or be in a vehicle with another person who has been drinking and attempts to drive.

• Alcohol will make you feel bad for a few days afterwards. This is the awful hangover, and it’s not something anyone wants to experience. It’s also something they don’t forget. Hangovers can cause your teen to be thirsty, dizzy, and light-headed. Other hangover symptoms include headaches caused by the expansion of blood vessels, and sleepiness, due to the narcotic effects of alcohol on the body’s central nervous system. As a result of the hangover, your teen may feel too ill to go to school or participate in events and activities they would normally be involved in.

• Drinking on prom night can ruin more than just one day. The damage that drinking can cause can be pretty disastrous – to your teen, the family, and your teen’s friends. Despite the fact that your teen is trying to be independent and stretch his or her wings, they are still very vulnerable. A ruined reputation, injuries or fatalities, fights, legal and school problems, not to mention what it does to their relationship with you, the parents, are too steep a price to pay for one night of partying with alcohol.

Be In On All the Details of Prom Night

Once you’ve had the discussion, be sure that you’re up-to-date on all the details pertaining to prom night. Make sure that your teen knows, and feels comfortable enough, to call you for a ride or assistance if there’s a problem with anyone drinking at prom.
It’s important that you be as loving and caring as possible during this time. While you don’t want to appear intrusive on this all-important event, it is your right as parents to know exactly what the plans are for prom and make sure you approve of them. You can even help your teen to come up with desirable alternatives to drinking at the prom (or before or after).

If you’ve established an open and honest two-way communication channel, it shouldn’t be difficult to show your enthusiasm for the prom preparations and to stay informed on plans. Remember the TV shows and movies where the teenage boy came to the door with the corsage or wrist bouquet for his prom date and the girl’s father and mother looked the boy over and pretty much grilled him and laid down the law? It’s pretty much still the same – minus the grilling. The point is that you want to know whom your son or daughter is taking to the prom, how they’re getting there, what time prom starts and ends, who the chaperones are, who else is going, and other pertinent details. Make sure both parties (the boy and the girl) know the time they are expected home.

Contact the parents of your teen’s close friends so you have a united front on all the prom preparations – and rules and expectations. Be prepared that not every family is as vigilant on this matter and may not welcome your broaching the subject. Try to be as diplomatic as possible, but do have the discussion. It helps if you already are well acquainted with these parents – but don’t let the fact that you don’t know them well deter you from taking the initiative and calling them.

What Happens When Your Teen Drinks on Prom Night

Of course, it’s unrealistic to think that your teen won’t drink just because you’ve had an in-depth discussion, kept yourself informed of all the plans, and talked with other parents about prom night. You can’t foresee all the things that may happen when prom night actually arrives. You just do the best that you can ahead of time.

If the reality turns out to be that your teenage son or daughter gets involved with alcohol on the night of the prom – whether or not there is trouble attached to their involvement – be prepared to deal with the matter swiftly. Your teen will already know that there are consequences, so now’s the time to enforce them.

What those punishments entail depends upon the severity of the problem, as well as any mitigating circumstances. If, for example, someone spiked your teen’s non-alcoholic beverage with alcohol and/or drugs, that’s a whole different situation than if he or she willingly consumed alcohol. And, depending on the circumstance, there may be other things that you and your teen have to deal with, including legal issues, problems with school (expulsion, for example), and medical conditions resulting from alcoholic consumption.

Through it all, if your teen drinks or gets into a problem related to alcohol on prom night – or any other night, for that matter – be sure that your teen knows that you love him or her unconditionally. This will not in any way alter that fact. But also let them know in no uncertain terms that there are consequences for drinking alcohol. The restrictions and/or punishments you enforce will last only for a time, and your teen can show you he or she has learned the lesson by their actions – not their words. They can earn your trust again by demonstrating responsibility and keeping their word.

Just because it happens once doesn’t mean your son or daughter is destined to become an alcoholic or have problems with alcohol the rest of their life. Sometimes a brief and nasty (due to the side effects) encounter with alcohol is enough to convince your teen that drinking is not something they should be doing at this time of their lives. There is a time and a place for responsible drinking – but not when you’re a teen.

Finally, it may be helpful for parents to remember this acronym: CLASS.

• Care – for your teen at all times and in all circumstances.
• Love – your teen no matter what happens.
• Advise – your teen on the dangers of alcohol.
• Seek – help from others when necessary.
• Support – your teen to encourage responsible action at a