Addictions Resources

If you’re the family member of an alcoholic or drug addict, chances are the person’s addiction is going to become a problem for you long before it ever becomes their problem. Why?

Many addicts and alcoholics started using their substance of choice to get away from their problems. To understand this you need to be aware of the 3 classic contributing factors behind developing an addiction, predisposition, environmental stress and prolonged use. If you take away any one of these it becomes unlikely, though not impossible, that someone will become an addict/alcoholic.

For the moment, we don’t need to consider predisposition other than to mention that if it didn’t exist the person might still become a problem drinker, but would be less likely to become an alcoholic/addict. Prolonged use for the person who is predisposed and begins using alcohol or drugs is almost a forgone conclusion. That leaves the environmental stress.

The reasons that people begin drinking and drugging vary greatly, but the reality is that most people who try any of it on an experimental basis soon give it up. That’s true unless they begin the experimentation during a critical time when there is an environmental stress factor. It’s little surprise that a great many alcoholics and addicts have sexual abuse or other trauma in their background. A friend of mine tells the story of being physically and mentally abused as a child. He took his first drink at 10 and didn’t put down the bottle until he was well into his fifties when he lost a limb after a long binge. What he says about that initial drink was that it made him feel powerful. Of course not every alcoholic/addict feels that power, for many the drugs supply a numbing effect.

Try understanding the power of denial this way. One day you develop the worst toothache you’ve ever had, or at least you think it’s a toothache. It’s late on a Friday and you can’t get into the dentist until Monday, but you discover that drinking a glass of whisky every couple of hours relieves the pain. On Monday, the dentist tells you that she can find nothing wrong with your tooth, but she can give you a pain prescription. Except when you are taking the pain prescription, or drinking liquor the pain never goes away. You go and see several other dentists, but none of them can find the source of the pain. Months into your ordeal your out of pain medication, the dentists won’t prescribe more and the only thing that works is the alcohol.

One day your spouse says, “I am tired of you drinking all the time. You have to quit.” Imagine the desperation you might feel at that point, imagine the fear of the oncoming pain if you do stop. Even if you have had to stop working because you couldn’t get through the day without the alcohol wouldn’t you insist that there’s no problem with alcohol.

For any number of reasons, the alcoholic/addict comes to need their drug. Often the addict may be using drugs to numb the pain from a psychological injury, sometimes the problem really did develop during the time of a physical injury. The person may not even be aware of the whats and whys of their using all they may know is that when they think of giving up their substance they get very anxious and anything and anyone who wants them to give it up becomes a threat to what they perceive to be their well being.

Hopefully, this helps explain a bit about why drugs and alcohol become a problem for the family member long before they are perceived to be a problem by the person using them.