Addiction often involves entire family

Many people think that an alcoholic is the man eating out of the trash, living on the street and drinking out of a paper bag. Or that the drug addict is the person arrested by the police who lives in the trailer park with needles all around.

However, addiction often looks more like the teacher, the physician, the lawyer and the parent next door. People with an addiction may be functional in their careers and they may only use at night or on the weekends.

The family may think nothing of the dad coming home from work every day with a six-pack, or the daughter who frequently returns from the restroom with the sniffles, or the grandmother who gets her "medicine" from several doctors or pharmacists. People who are addicted feel a lot of guilt and shame and are used to hiding the problem well.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual's fourth edition, symptoms of addiction include withdrawal and tolerance. Withdrawal symptoms occur when the person has been without the substance for a short period of time; they are physical and psychological. Accordingly, the person wants to use the substance again in order to reduce the cravings or the physical symptoms. Symptoms of tolerance occur when the person needs increasingly larger amounts of a substance to achieve intoxication.

Further symptoms of addiction are spending a lot of time getting, using or recovering from the substance. Addiction also causes the person to give up normal social, occupational, or recreational events. Often the person will continue using despite knowing they have significant problems.

People who are addicted have families who love them, and that makes it a family disease. Family members are often harmed by the damage addiction causes. While the alcoholic is able to escape from emotional pain, the family must cope with increasing dysfunction by both healthy and unhealthy means.

These survival roles can be taken on by any member of the family. Some adult members may take responsibility for the person's use and make futile attempts to make things better for the family. The responsible one gives stability to the chaos, the adjuster reduces the stress in the family, and the placater makes all members feel comfortable.

Children also take on survival roles such as the hero who alleviates family pain by being a high achiever, the scapegoat is the problem child whose behavior exposes the underlying family pain, the mascot who tries humor to distract from tension and the lost child becomes a quiet loner and keeps to himself. This is a relief for the family because there is one less family member to worry about.

All is not lost. There is support out there for people who have an addiction and the family members who love them. Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, which are spiritually based, support addicts throughout the world; Al-Anon and Alateen groups support their families.

For local meeting listings for these groups, please see meeting section of any local newspaper or search the Internet for specific meeting times. Other self-help groups exist as well that emphasize the capacity to change independent of spirituality (Rational Recovery, Secular Organizations for Sobriety).

Dayna Haynes is pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology at Argosy University in Tampa and currently works with substance-abusing adults at Manatee Glens, a not-for-profit health care provider that delivers services from seven Manatee County locations.

Bradenton Herald