Help Families Navigate a Loved One’s 1st Year of Recovery
Help families navigate a loved one’s 1st year of recovery from addiction is critical to family members’ health and well-being. Just because their loved one started recovery is not going to take care of what happened to them. Why is this so important to understand?
Nearly 100 million Americans and hundreds of millions more worldwide are affected by a loved one’s drinking or other drug use. These two articles will give some idea of the family member’s experience: Behind Every Alcoholic or Drug Addict is a Family Member or Two or Three… and The Dance of the Family Disease of Addiction.
Given 100 million are affected by a loved one’s drinking or other drug use, it’s critical we…
Help Families Navigate a Loved One’s 1st Year of Recovery
…for their own sakes; their own physical and mental health recovery. The following 3 suggestions can help.
1 Understand the Family Member is Deeply Affected
Coping with a loved one’s drinking behaviors and the other factors related to a loved one’s addiction causes health and quality-of-life consequences for family members.
[Note: drinking behaviors are similar to other drug-use behaviors. The terms addiction and alcoholism are now diagnosed as severe substance use disorders. This link explains.]
These health and quality-of-life consequences are typically caused by the brain’s fight-or-flight stress response system (FFSRS). When this stress response is repeatedly activated by repeatedly coping with drinking or other drug use behaviors and a loved one’s addiction, that individual’s stress becomes toxic stress.
Toxic stress can result in:
- stomach ailments
- sleep difficulties
- anxiety, depression, frequent or wild mood swings
- chronic neck and/or shoulder pain
- frequent headaches, migraines
- chest pain, palpitations, rapid pulse
- increased anger, frustration, hostility
- feeling overloaded, overwhelmed, helpless, hopeless
- and a host of inflammatory diseases.
When a person doesn’t understand the “real” causes of their health concerns as being the outcome of coping with a loved one’s drinking/drug use behaviors and/or addiction, they often blame themselves. They may change their thoughts, feelings and behaviors in order to stay safe or believe there is something more they can do to help their loved one.
This sets up a terribly complicated, harmful cycle and makes their toxic stress even worse. It also results in their continuing to accommodate unacceptable behaviors believing there is something more or different they can or should do. This further worsens their physical and emotional health.
2 Understand Character Has Nothing to Do with Addiction (aka Substance Use Disorder)
This is one of the most persistent falsehoods about addiction. But science now shows us addiction is not a moral weakness, nor a lack of willpower, any more than the chronic diseases of cancer or heart disease are caused by poor moral character or a lack of willpower. Given the truth of this, then it’s true addiction cannot be treated in 30 days any more than cancer or heart disease can.
This gives you a very GENERAL treatment/recovery time-line of the first year:
- 1st 90 Days It generally takes at least 3 months for the brain to rewire to the extent it is “comfortable” without the alcohol or other drug chemicals and willing to fully engage in the other aspects of an individual’s treatment/recovery plan (see last paragraph in this section).
- At About 1 Year At about one-year, all concerned can feel more confident. Likely over the course of this 1st year, treatment protocols will have been modified or changed, with some treatment/recovery components continuing for a period of time thereafter.
As for understanding addiction as the chronic, often relapsing brain disease it is, I urge you to watch The Addiction Project documentary. It was produced by HBO in collaboration with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. These two videos are also helpful. One is titled, “What is Addiction?” The other is on “The Science of Relapse”. I also suggest you browse through NIDA’s website, “Drugs, Brains and Behavior: The Science of Addiction.”
Some of the concepts you’ll learn:
- The key risk factors for developing addiction (genetics, early use, social environment, childhood trauma, mental illness, repeated alcohol or drug abuse) which helps explain how a person “gets” an addiction.
- The key characteristics of the disease which helps explain the difference between addiction and substance abuse.
- “Dual diagnosis” (aka co-occurring disorders) which is when a mental illness and an addiction are present – in other words, two brain diseases – and why both the mental illness and the addiction must be treated at the same time.
Three things to help the family navigate the 1st year of recovery.
And as for what it takes to treat addiction, it is important to know there is not one-size-fits-all. There are common components, yes, but there is no one way to treat addiction, just as there is no one-way to cancer or heart disease.
To understand what’s involved with treating addiction, check out NIDA’s Principles of Effective Treatment: a Research-Based Guide [if your loved one is an adult]. There is also Principles of Adolescent Substance Use Disorder: A Research-Based Guide.
3 Know that Family Members Needs Their Own Healing and Recovery
Toxic stress is a brain and body changer and can wreck havoc on the family member’s physical and emotional health; the very quality of their life. I know. I spent almost four decades coping with various loved one’s alcohol use disorders believing if they got help, all would be well. The rest of the family would be fine.
I was so very wrong.
Explaining why and what I learned and how getting the right kind of help changed my life is beyond the scope of this post. But I’ve pulled all of this together in the detail it needs to be covered in my latest book. It’s titled 10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You’d Stop! What you really need to know when your loved one drinks too much. [Note: even though it’s about alcohol use disorders, the information is equally helpful for family members whose loved one’s addition is to drugs other than alcohol.]
The first half explains alcohol use disorders – how they’re developed and treated and what long-term recovery requires. The second half explains what happens to family members and what they can do to take back control of their physical and emotional health and the quality of their lives.
Bottom Line
These three understandings can help shatter the secrecy, misinformation and shame that keeps family members and those who struggle with addiction and recovery so stuck. This, in turn, helps all concerned get the help they need.
Feel free to email me at lisaf@BreakingTheCycles.com to schedule a call to answer specific questions. There is no charge for these initial “help” conversations.
Lisa Frederiksen
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These are great suggestions, Lisa. Families are affected by their loved one’s drinking or drug use. Early recovery can be challenging. The more insights that family members have so they can be the best support possible, the better off everyone will be.
Thank you, Cathy. And for parents whose children are grappling with alcohol or other drug use, I urge you to check out Cathy’s website. She is a certified parent recovery coach and shares a wealth of information on her blog, https://www.CathyTaughinbaugh.com.