Substance Use Disorder Recovery Needs to be a Family Affair
Substance use disorder recovery needs to be a family affair for one simple reason. A person’s substance use disorder (SUD (whether it involves alcohol or other drug) affects nearly every member of a family. Much of my work has been around raising awareness of the little understood fact and the importance of treating both “sides” of this family disease. Why this approach?
Because nearly 100 million family members are affected by a loved one’s substance use disorder. I am one of those family members and from personal experience understand the absolute need for this approach. It wasn’t until the year of my 50th birthday that I finally accepted I needed help after nearly four decades of loving/living with family members who had alcohol use disorders (which is one of the substance use disorders). This, in spite of the fact that some of my loved ones had treated their SUD and were living in long-term recovery; meaning their getting help did not “fix” my life.
Now to explain my approach…
Substance Use Disorder Recovery Needs to be a Family Affair
There are 21+ million Americans living with substance use disorder (SUD), of which only 10 percent are getting the help they need. There are more than 100 million American family members affected by those 21+ million’s SUD-related behaviors. These behaviors include the lying, verbal abuse, secretive or suspicious behaviors, unexplained changes in personality or attitude, sudden mood swings, irritability or angry outbursts, broken promises to stop or cut down…). Yet relatively even fewer of these family members are getting the help they need because there’s little understanding of the “family-ness” of substance use disorder recovery. Which means there is little understanding of the physical and emotional health and quality of life impacts family members experience when coping with a loved one’s SUD.
These impacts to family members include anxiety, depression, migraines, headaches, stomach problems, sleep difficulties, heart problems, obesity, inflammatory conditions and more. Additionally, one in four children live with a parent with SUD, and growing up with a parent with untreated SUD can cause a child to develop an alcohol use disorder or marry someone with an alcohol use disorder or develop a host of physical and emotional ailments that can last a lifetime. As importantly, this connection can cause a child to have difficulty concentrating in school, be misdiagnosed with ADHD, have learning or processing differences, or develop reactionary coping skills, like fighting, yelling, hitting, or engaging in angry outbursts.
How Are These Family Member Impacts Even Possible
The constant hammering on their fight-or-flight stress response is the simple answer because it can result in toxic stress.
Toxic stress is what happens when a person’s fight-or-flight stress response is repeatedly triggered – like that which occurs when repeatedly coping with a loved one’s SUD-related behaviors. This fight-or-fight stress response is one of the survival instincts built into humans to keeps us safe when threatened with danger.
It’s “designed,” if you will, to release a cascade of stress hormones to cause a series of changes in the body to prepare it to fight or run – changes like the tensing of the muscles, increasing the heart rate, and shutting down of the digestive system to conserve glucose. These changes enable us to jump out of the path of an oncoming car or experience superhuman strength to lift a fallen beam pinning our child to the ground. The physical act of jumping out of the way or lifting the beam – averting the danger – allows the body to return to normal functioning. This triggering and resolution is known as positive stress.
But when our fight-or-flight stress response is repeatedly triggered, and we never physically fight or run, the cascade of stress hormones and physical changes “marinate.” They “sit” in body organs and tissues – like the brain, heart, muscles, and stomach. This is when stress becomes toxic.
As explained above, the physical and emotional health consequences of toxic stress include migraines, stomach problems, muscle aches, sleep difficulties, tension headaches, anxiety, depression, difficulty concentrating, racing heartbeat, and skin problems, to name a few. When children experience toxic stress, it “weakens the architecture of the developing brain, with long-term consequences for learning, behavior, and both physical and mental health,” according to the Center on the Developing Child Harvard University.
Beyond the physical and emotional health toxic stress consequences are the mapped “fight-flight-freeze-appease” stress reactions and coping behaviors a person develops in order to deal with and protect themselves from the SUD-related behaviors. These, in turn, affect a person’s personal, work, school, social, family, and community interactions in ways that are little understood and too complex to explain in this post.
And it is all of these toxic stress consequences that we must understand as a society so that when a person shares with a friend or their doctor they are grappling with any of the health impacts I’ve listed above, that friend or doctor would think to ask, “Do you have a loved one whose behaviors change when they drink or use other drugs.” Societally, we would know that these physical and emotional health ailments are the symptoms of toxic stress and that 100+ million Americans are potentially experiencing this toxic stress, simply because they love or live with a person with SUD, so asking this question is not out of line. My article, “Alcohol Misuse Going on in the Family? If Only My Doctor Had Asked,” shares my experience.
Bottom Line
Substance Use Disorder Recovery needs to be a family affair.
Most of the treatment and recovery focus is on helping the 21+ million Americans struggling with SUD. And, I ABSOLUTELY support this as something of utmost importance. But, if we don’t fully treat and help the 100+ million Americans struggling with a loved one’s SUD, in other words, we leave nearly one-third the American population struggling with toxic stress outcomes. And in so doing, we perpetuate the cycle of this family disease.
As for what family substance use disorder recovery might look like, I urge you to read 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.
It shares the latest research in a conversational manner to explain:
- that substance use disorder has three classifications – mild, moderate and severe (moderate is what we typically think of as substance abuse and severe is what we typically think of as alcoholism or drug addiction)
- why severe substance use disorder (SUD) is considered a brain disease (aka brain disorder) and how/why a person develops SUD
- why treatment for SUD is not “one-size fits all,” nor does it necessarily have to involve residential rehab or a 12-step program, yet the only to treat it is to completely stop the substance use and then get help for the other components of this brain disease
- what childhood trauma (adverse childhood experiences, like having a parent with SUD) has to do with developing an SUDs and the impacts of childhood trauma on family members
- why dealing with a loved one’s SUD-related behaviors can cause toxic stress, and why toxic stress can change a family member’s physical and emotional health and quality of life
- and what it takes to help family members treat their toxic stress impacts and return their lives to “normal.”
Lastly, please know that I’m happy to talk with you via Zoom or a phone call to answer your questions. There is no charge for these kinds of calls. Just send me an email to lisaf@BreakingTheCycles.com to schedule.
Lisa Frederiksen
Latest posts by Lisa Frederiksen (see all)
- Does a Loved One Have to Hit Bottom? - November 20, 2022
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- 4 Things to Support Brain Health and Function for Recovery - August 30, 2022
Thank you! I really do like your articles and it reminds me of how much I need to focus on my own path to healing.
You’re so welcome, Harpa and thanks for sharing your thoughts on this (and your compliment of my articles 🙂 )