Alcoholism is a Family Disease – Really
Alcoholism is a family disease I was told by the staff at the residential treatment center my loved one entered for his alcoholism. “Oh brother, you can’t be serious!” I countered. “And what do you mean, I’m a codependent, an enabler, and that I should get help. I don’t need help — he’s the one with the problem. Just fix him and we’ll all be fine.”
It’s what wasn’t known about the science of why the entire family is affected by a loved one’s alcoholism (or other drug addiction, for that matter) that made it so difficult to accept…
Alcoholism is a Family Disease – Really
How? Why?
As I described it in my 2012 post titled “The Family Disease of Addiction – Reflections on Mother’s Day,”
“Back in the day, when we did not understand the brain disease of addiction, nor what happens to the brains of the family members or friends who love someone with the disease when it’s not treated, understood or healthily discussed, time together was a minefield. We didn’t understand secondhand drinking. One of us was usually on edge. I was usually wallowing in self-pity or ranting about the latest transgression, and the tension and fear were something you could cut with a knife. There was always the pall of impending doom because doom was usually pending. Mind space and conversations were generally consumed with shares or tirades about what someone else was or was not doing or the good times we’d have when so and so or such and such got fixed or did this or that.
“Not anymore.”
Healing the family disease of alcoholism (or other drug use disorders). Photo of my daughters and I walking a beach in Half Moon Bay, CA (2020).
And every year since, I celebrate my “Not anymore,” on Mother’s Day – a day I used to dread – as I explained in my May 5, 2013 post, Mothers Who Love an Addict | Alcoholic:
“Mothers who love an alcoholic have it doubly hard in my opinion. We not only try to help the person with the drinking problem and/or addiction, we try to keep our non-drinking children safe in all manner of ways. We don’t want them to know what’s really going on because we don’t really know ourselves. And so we dig in, trying desperately to protect our children, and in the process, we often make a muck of it.
“I know I did. I am such a mother. The havoc wrecked in my life and then by me in the lives of my daughters made most holidays – but especially Mothers Day from my perspective – something to get through because joy had long been absconded in our family. I didn’t feel I deserved their cards and gifts and unconditional love. I felt like a bad mother. I felt guilty that I could not make things better. I felt sad that they carried an unnameable sadness that wasn’t apparent on the outside, but I believed to be there on their inside, and as expressed in this anonymous ‘Unsent Letter to Dad’ shared with me, it was an unnameable sadness that was, in fact, likely there.
An Unsent Letter to Dad: the Impact of Secondhand Drinking on Children
“But not anymore. Not any more.”
What Does It Take to Heal the Family
It takes understanding alcoholism [or other drug addictions] for what they are — brain diseases (aka brain disorders). It takes understanding how and why a person develops this particular disease and others don’t.
It takes understanding the physical and emotional health consequences of toxic stress, which is what happens to family members repeatedly coping with a loved one’s drinking and/or alcoholism-related behaviors.
This is a poem I wrote several years ago to express how understanding this disease could have changed my life much sooner than it did.
It takes understanding how and why both sides of this family disease need their own help. It takes knowing what effective help is, how to get it, and why it’s so important to stick with it.
Where can you find this information?
Consider reading my latest book, released November 2019, 10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You’d Stop! What you really need to know when your loved one drinks too much. As its title implies, it’s filled with the latest information, which is then intertwined with my own personal story. This is not about selling books (FYI – my portion of the sale is only $1.32/book 
). It’s about trying to give family members and friends the key information they need to change their lives. Information that helps them understand alcohol use disorders, effective treatment, drinking patterns, toxic stress, secondhand drinking, brain rewiring for better health, techniques for staying sane in the midst of insane circumstances, etc. But it’s written with the layperson in mind. It’s the book I’d wished I could have found when I needed this kind of help.
And as always, know you can send me an email at lisaf@BreakingTheCycles.com to request a FREE call to talk about your specific situation. Just know – there is hope and there are answers. It is entirely possible to live a happy, content, joy-filled life, again.
Lisa Frederiksen
Latest posts by Lisa Frederiksen (see all)
- Does a Loved One Have to Hit Bottom? - November 20, 2022
- Resources for Parents of Children with Substance Use and Mental Disorders - October 18, 2022
- 4 Things to Support Brain Health and Function for Recovery - August 30, 2022
Lisa, pretty powerful messages in this April 2nd posting. So much writing from the heart by both you and the daughter’s unsent letter. What a brave young woman. So good that she realized the damage at such a young age. Thank goodness awareness is abound for us these days, and the doors are open for us, esp. young people, to talk about it !!
Thank you so much, Shelley, for sharing your thoughts on my post. It’s really heartening to hear it resonates and helps with raising awareness.