When Lori and Skip (not their real names) realized their son was a drug addict, they didn’t know whether to run away or just seal themselves in the den and never come out. Other avenues of escape tore through their minds as they discovered that not only was their older son addicted, but also had been bringing drugs into the home where he lived with his parents and younger brother and sister.
“I just don’t believe it,” Skip moaned. “He’ll get better. It’s just a one-time thing.”
“He would never do that,” Lori cried. “Never.”
Disbelief (that a loved one could be an addict) can turn into denial as families try to escape the pain of their helplessness in changing the addict.
The lack of understanding about addictions can cause many people, including members of churches, to hide these problems and needlessly suffer alone. All family members need to learn about the addiction process and how each one has developed coping mechanisms that may prove to be ineffective as the family moves toward a recovery lifestyle. Family members are often resistant to the idea that they need treatment also, stating “It is his (or her) problem.”
Disbelief — not believing their loved one could be an addict — may turn into denial to avoid confronting their painful helplessness in changing the addict. Denial is a protective mechanism. It is a defense. Refusal to accept the facts keeps people from feeling the painful truth. There is a denial of the powerlessness over the addict’s behavior, denial of the unmanageability of the problems the alcohol or drug use are causing, denial of the seriousness of the problem and denial of the pain the addiction has caused.
It is not difficult to imagine a marriage partner taking on more and more of the family responsibilities as the addict’s condition progresses. Someone has to take care of the children. Someone has to pay the bills. Someone has to put food on the table. As that someone takes on more responsibility, resentments multiply and the harboring of these resentments starts to take its own toll on the family.
Secondary to the lack of understanding about addictions in families of our churches and the tendency to judge the alcoholic/addict, the spouse often enters into a role of enabler. Sometimes a spouse covers for the user to protect the family reputation in the community. Because of the stigma attached to substance abuse, family members may decrease social contacts outside the home.
Children are reluctant to bring friends home from school, and the spouse may limit social activities to avoid shame and to limit outsiders’ knowledge of the problem. As the disease progresses, the parent or spouse becomes increasingly preoccupied with the behavior of the alcoholic. This preoccupation is called co-dependency. The children lose the addicted parent to alcohol or drug use. They also lose the other parent as the spouse becomes obsessed with trying to control the addict. The entire family begins a process of developing rules to deal with unpredictable behavior of the addict.
Alcohol is a factor in many of the societal problems seen today. Physical violence, child abuse, sexual abuse and poor work performance are a few of the ways that what happens inside the addict’s family has an effect on everyone.
Claudia Black was one of the first to acknowledge the long-term effects of the alcoholic family system on the children in the family in her 1981 book, “It Will Never Happen to Me.” She introduced the three primary rules of the alcoholic family and how these rules lead to lifelong maladaptive behaviors with the children.
The “Don’t Talk” rule develops as the family tries to rationalize the behavior of the alcoholic and “invent reasons, other than alcoholism, for crazy behavior.” The family avoids talking about what is really happening at home and the children learn to distrust their own perceptions. They learn to hide the truth from themselves. Even as an adult, the child may feel a sense of disloyalty to the family if they openly admit the alcoholism that has existed since their childhood.
The “Don’t Trust” rule develops to keep others outside the home from finding out the truth and as a natural consequence of not being able to trust either parent to be open, honest, reassuring and consistent.
The “Don’t Feel” rule develops from “learning to focus on the environment or on other people, or learning to detach from the family. Children of alcoholics don’t perceive others as resources, therefore they live their lives alone.”
Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse wrote of the roles commonly adopted by the family members in this dysfunctional system in order to maintain some kind of order in the family.
The roles are not consciously chosen, but develop over time as family members seek to cope with the imbalance and chaos in the home. She mentions the enabler, the lost child and the scapegoat. These roles protect the family from the pain of the addiction by diverting attention to other members in the family or allowing the denial to continue. As long as the family stays in denial, they are unlikely to be helpful in breaking through the denial of the user. The family becomes locked in a cycle that allows the progression of this deadly disease to continue.
Just as the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) help the substance-dependent to work toward his or her recovery, the family members have programs available to them to address their own recovery needs. AA helps the alcoholic accept responsibility for his or her recovery, while Al-Anon assists the spouse, and ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) assists the person who has grown up in an alcoholic family.
Too often, the church has taken a stand against the alcoholic and addict. Some have stood in judgment and caused further shame and isolation of the hurting family.
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