Drug addiction affects the user physically and mentally. However, it can do the same for anyone involved in the addict's life, especially the family. The effects of drug abuse on the members of the family can be overwhelming. In much the same way as the addict, family members coping with a drug-addicted relative can suffer from significant effects, including financial instability, impairment of work abilities and reputation, interruption of normal life activities, and greater risk of health problems because of stress or overcompensation for the addict.
Significance
Drug abuse within a family causes debilitating emotional strain for partners and relatives, creates irreparable damage to children, and carries the power to destroy the family altogether.
Family Relationships
It is impossible for a family to sustain a healthy existence when one member is addicted to drugs: Drug-induced illusions of the addict can alter the family's own reality, rendering it tenuous and unreliable and destroying the foundation for the family.
Children
The effects of drug abuse on children, particularly when a parent is the addict, include painful feelings of responsibility, assuming the role of the missing parent (who is now the child figure), belief that their childhood experiences have been taken and the abandonment of faith in a strong parental figure.
Parents
For parents who discover their child's drug abuse, the immediate effects include overwhelming feelings of anger because the child placed himself in a dangerous situation and guilt from thinking they should have known or could have stopped the addiction.
Spouses or Partners
Significant others tend to feel responsible for a partner's addiction, the pain the partner is suppressing with drugs. This leaves them with a sense of obligation to support their partner by covering for them, lying, enabling and altering work schedules to deal with the drug abuser.
Codependency
The behavioral problems of a drug addict can control families, causing the family to hide the situation from visitors or the public, avoiding discussing the problem, covering for acute situations with the addict's employer or peers, and creating misguided optimism that the family can cure the addict.
Tags: drug abuse