Addiction: A Family Disease
By: Kathy Avayianos, B.A., B.S.W.,

While it is quite common for family members with an embedded addict in their midst, to assume that it is solely the individual with the addiction who has the problem, it is important for all family members to learn about the collaborative patterns that they have engaged in as part of a family system.

Addiction envelops the family collectively as everyone becomes progressively immobilized by the pervasive distress. Each individual contributes to the functioning of their family system and engages in efforts to manage and endure what is happening to their family where addiction resides.

Amidst the stress and chaos that enters the home of an addicted family, each individual family member gradually adjusts and adapts with survival behaviour that causes the least amount of personal stress. The family learns to manage while incorporating the problem. As all families are a part of a system, individual family members acclimatize themselves in order to live normally.

What may have been thought of as unhealthy, problematic or stressful at one point eventually becomes the norm as does enabling and co-dependency.1

In some cases, families that host an addicted member do not acknowledge that the problem exists in a direct manner. They may choose to not talk about the problem or confront it. In turn, family members repress their emotions and consequently ignore their own internal instincts. By not talking, not touching, not confronting, not feeling, and not trusting the emotional development of the family is inhibited and this is largely done to survive and cope with a perceived sense of powerlessness around the addiction.1

When a parent is the dependent member, the addiction becomes embedded in the fabric of what is familiar for the family. This becomes the reality that the entire family comes to accept, especially the children.

The status quo becomes comprised of rigid and unhealthy relationship patterns, coalitions formed against the user or the non-using partner, possible conflicts and violence and inappropriate distance or closeness between certain members.

Learning to enable as part of coping with addiction in the family is quite a common and natural adaptation for family members. The intentions behind enabling are usually rooted in love, care, concern and fear.

Enabling prevents the dependent person from experiencing the negative consequences of their own behaviour. Family members protect the dependent person by denying the problem to others or making excuses, thereby protecting the image of the addicted person. Family members can also enable by agreeing with the rationalizations of the addict, including blaming themselves and justifying their accompanying behaviours. Family members will ‘walk on eggshells’ when in the company of the addicted person, for fear of upsetting them, while other family members enable by avoiding the problem – withdrawing from the family issue and refusing to talk about it.

Many family members will take on all the responsibilities of the household, thus relinquishing the addicted person of further accountability. The impact of the addiction can accordingly infuse family members with feelings ranging from apprehension and confusion to frustration, anger and resentment, tempered with fear, anxiety and sadness. Family members are not the only ones who
enable. Friends, co-workers and employers can easily fall into similar enabling patterns in efforts to manage the addiction within the shared relationship. In the addiction field, one will hear the term co-dependency.

Co-dependency is a learned set of maladaptive and compulsive behaviours that can be passed down from one generation to another. It can be both an emotional and behavioural condition that affects an individual’s ability to have a healthy mutually satisfying relationship.

Co-dependency often affects the spouse, parent, sibling, friend or co-worker of a person who is addicted. A co-dependent person focuses their attention and energy on the family member who is addicted and they typically sacrifice their own needs to take care of the addict. People experiencing this problem often come to a place where they prioritize the health, welfare and safety of others before their own and can easily lose contact with their own independent needs, desires and sense of self.2

While the intentions of the co-dependent person are honourable, their increased motivation to caretake and control the unmanageable addict can become compulsive and self-defeating. As the addict relies more and more on the ‘caretaker’, the caretaker may develop a sense of reward and satisfaction from being needed.

By continually doing more than their share, and by loving people that they can rescue, co-dependent people can become over invested in concentrating on things outside themselves. When co-dependent people experience a sense of helplessness within a shared relationship, they may come to take on the role of the martyr and it is a struggle to break away from the cycle of co-dependent behaviours that has become routine for them.

Co-dependency appears in varying degrees along a continuum. The further along on the continuum, the greater the effect on the quality of life. However, this deterioration in quality of life may create an opportunity for the caretaker to begin the recovery process.

Recovery from co-dependency involves change and growth on behalf of the entire family.

Caretaking and enabling behaviours need to be recognized and worked through so that the co-dependent person can embrace their own feelings and needs.

Recovery involves deep work based on shifting the relationship with self and learning to take responsibility for feelings, actions and behaviours.

A major area of focus for recovery can be establishing and reinforcing boundaries in relationships.

Cultivating a new sense of healthy, personal boundaries can emerge from discovering what individuals believe they do and don’t deserve. The journey of recovery invites co-dependent people to assert themselves by maintaining clarity and capability surrounding their own commitment to the enforcement of these personal boundaries.

By creating a congruency between their verbal assertions and their behavioural commitments, family members can create positive change for themselves.

By letting go of the need to control people, places and events, co-dependent individuals can recover from self-defeating patterns of shame and fear. They come to accept and understand the powerlessness that comes with attempting to control the addict within the family.

Recovery from co-dependency is possible whether or not the addict chooses recovery. In recognizing the significant impact of addiction on the family system, Bellwood Health Services aims to provide a safe, supportive and confidential environment for families to explore how their family system has come to be affected by addiction.

Through the provision of our fourday Family Program, Bellwood endeavours to educate and assist families in dealing with their own personal adaptations and stressors. The Family Program consists of lectures, workshops and group sessions for addicted families to explore their own
issues and venture into their own personal journey of recovery. This service remains available to the family members of our clients, alumni and to families in the community.

Bellwood’s Family Program is also a valuable tool for health care professionals and corporate representatives interested in obtaining addiction education.

For more information about the Program,
contact the Bellwood Intake Department at
416-495-0926 or toll free (800) 387-6198.

Kathy Avayianos, B.A., B.S.W., is a
Family Counsellor at Bellwood.

References:
(1) Edwards, John T., Treating Chemically Dependent
Families, 1990.
(2) National Mental Health Association Fact Sheet,
2006.

“It’s a good thing to have all the props
pulled out from under us occasionally. It
gives us some sense of what is rock under our
feet, and what is sand.�? Madeleine L’Engle Writer