Codependency – Secondhand Drinking | Drugging Connection
Understanding the codependency – secondhand drinking | drugging connection offers an opportunity to reframe a confusing subject. In this reframing, we better help those coping with a loved one’s drinking or drug use behaviors seek the help they need for their own health’s sake.
Codependency Explained
The term “codependent” is often used in the world of substance use disorder (aka addiction or alcoholism) treatment and recovery. It is used to describe the family member or close friend of someone with a severe drinking or drug use problem.
The original concept of codependency was developed to describe the responses and behaviors a person (spouse, parent or sibling) develops from living with someone with an alcohol or other drug use disorder (aka drug addiction or alcoholism). [Many terms are used to describe someone with substance use disorder, including terms like addict or alcoholic or person with severe substance use disorder. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to use the terms addict/alcoholic.]
The idea is that just as addict/alcoholic is focused (dependent) on their finding, seeking, using, recovering from their substance use, so too are friends and family members focused (dependent) on trying to get that person to stop. To seek treatment. To change their substance use patterns.
They have become co-dependent with the addict/alcoholic on his/her addiction, and in the process, the family member/friend (codependent) adapts to the unacceptable substance misuse behaviors in order to cope (and in some cases, survive). These coping behaviors – adaptations – are called “codependency.” (1)
Understanding the Secondhand Drinking | Drugging – Codependency Connection can help parents, children, friends, co-workers, aunts, uncles and close friends get the help they need for their own health’s sake.
So Why the Terms Secondhand Drinking | Drugging
While the concept and intent of the term “codependency” is vital, it’s a term many have a hard time identifying with. It’s heard as a judgement of them when all they were trying to do is help their loved one or friend. From this place, they don’t see the relevance of learning about the concept and the implications it has for them in terms of their own health and ongoing happiness.
Using the terms Secondhand Drinking | Drugging (SHD) does.
SHD refers to the negative impacts of a person’s drinking or other drug use behaviors on others.
These drinking or drug use behaviors occur when alcohol or other drug chemicals change the way a person’s brain functions. These brain function changes are caused by a variety of drinking patterns ranging from binge drinking to heavy social drinking to alcohol abuse to alcoholism. They are caused by a variety of drug use patterns ranging from taking someone else’s prescribed medications to not taking one’s own pain medications as prescribed to abusing illegal or legal drugs. These drinking | drugging behaviors include:
- Fighting with friends or family about the drinking | drugging; saying or doing things you don’t remember or regret.
- Driving while under the influence; getting a DUI (DWI); riding in a car driven by someone who has been drinking or drugging.
- Experiencing blackouts – fragmentary or complete; vomiting; passing out – not remembering what was said or while under the
influence. - Doing poorly at work or school because of the drinking or recovering from the effects of drinking | drugging.
- Having unplanned unwanted or unprotected sex; committing date rape.
- Being admitted to the emergency room with a high Blood Alcohol Content (BAC), in addition to the “real” reason (e.g., broken arm, feel down the stairs, auto accident).
- Physical fights; domestic violence.
To Draw a Connection to Secondhand Smoking
The terms Secondhand Drinking | Drugging are intended to draw a connection to secondhand smoking.
When we, as a society, took the focus off the cigarette smoker and instead focused on the new science that explained what a person’s cigarette smoke did to the health of others in its proximity, we had a sea change. Finally, people could understand that someone else’s cigarette smoke was the reason for their severe asthma attacks, respiratory infections, ear infections, heart disease, or lung cancer.
As this understanding grew, more people gained the information and the confidence they needed to take a stand against a person’s cigarette smoke – not the smoker – and to do what they needed to do to protect and repair their own health, regardless of whether the smoker stopped smoking.
New science is now available that can do similar things for people coping with a loved one’s drinking | drugging behaviors.
When we, as a society, take the focus off the drinker or drug user and instead focus on the new science that explains what coping with their drinking or other drug use behaviors does to others – we can create another sea change.
Finally, people will understand that repeatedly coping with a person’s drinking or other drug use behaviors is the likely cause of their migraines, anxiety, depression, sleep difficulties, stomach ailments, skin problems, heart disease, and similar health concerns (explained next).
With this understanding people can get the information and the confidence they need to take a stand against drinking or drug use behaviors – not the drinker or drug user – and to do what they need to do to protect and repair their own health, regardless of whether the drinker or drug user changes their drinking or drug use pattern and/or treats their alcoholism or drug addiction.
Why is this SO important? Because of the health consequences explained next.
Health Consequences of Secondhand Drinking | Drugging – Codependency
Whether one uses the term codependency or secondhand drinking | drugging, the physical and emotional health and quality of life consequences are largely the same. These consequences are the result of 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 drinking | drugging behaviors. This fight-or-fight stress response is one of the survival instincts built into humans to keeps us safe when threatened with danger.
When it is triggered, a cascade of stress hormones causes 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. 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.
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. (2)
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 drinking 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 are the far, far deeper problem.
So What Can a Person Experiencing Codependency – Secondhand Drinking | Drugging Do?
As you can imagine, this requires a long answer and a lot more background and information than I can provide here. But it is why I wrote my latest book, 10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You’d Stop! What you really need to know when your loved one drinks too much. [It applies equally to those whose loved one uses too much of another drug, as well.]
The first half explains alcohol use disorders – how they’re developed and treated and what long-term recovery requires. In the case of alcohol abuse, for example, it’s possible to learn to “re-drink,” but in the case of alcoholism, it must be total abstinence from alcohol, yet in both cases, there are other brain healing aspects necessary in order to address “why” a person finds themselves drinking to these extents in the first place. Understanding what you are dealing with – how it develops and can be treated is the key to understanding what you can and cannot do to help.
The second half explains what happens to family members and friends experiencing secondhand drinking and what they can do to take back control of their physical and emotional health and the quality of their lives. The book comes in both paperback and Kindle.
I also offer free phone, Zoom or Skype calls to answer reader’s specific questions. There is no charge. Please email me at lisaf@breakingthecycles.com to schedule.
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(1) “Codependency,” Mental Health America (formerly known as the National Mental Health Association), http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/go/codependency
(2) Center on the Developing Child Harvard University, “Toxic Stress Derails Healthy Development,” https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/toxic-stress-derails-healthy-development/
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An earlier but different version of this post appeared May 20, 2010, titled “Codependency – Secondhand Drinking | Drugging Connection.”
Lisa Frederiksen
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