How Does Substance Addiction Affect The Family

The prevalence of alcohol abuse/substance abuse is on the rise today. One of the biggest challenges facing our society today is dealing with the effects of alcohol/substance abuse in families. One can ascertain that alcohol/substance abuse can destroy not only an individual, but a whole family and even a whole community in general. This is a dangerous phenomenon that has made its way into many homes, leaving families shattered, hurt and left with nothing but anger.

The substance abuse of a parent has a lasting and apparent effect on all young children. There are a number of substances that can become a problem in people’s lives, including but not limited to; marijuana, alcohol, stimulants, depressants, narcotics, hallucinogens and inhalants. Drugs critically affect the individual taking them, but also affect the members of the household, especially children. Not only does the person’s addiction emotionally, mentally, and physically affect the individual lives of other members of the family, but it tears apart relationships between the families. Arguments, disagreements, violence, and stress can derive from the abuse of drugs because of the tension it puts on one’s other members of the family.

Growing up in the household under substances influence can cause severe damage to the child. Parental substance abuse has a significant impact on family function, and it may also contribute to child maltreatment. It heightens the risks to both of the physical and emotional safety of the children, and it generates children’s problematic outcomes. Children who grow up in such families may also experience mental health issues, social isolation, financial difficulties, and exposure to stressful life events and so on.

Parents who use drugs or alcohol are likely to overlook their children leaving them to their own diplomacy. Since such parents are often lost in their addictions, they are unable to provide the proper leadership that children need particularly throughout their growing days (Sindelar & Fiellin 2001). Teenagers bred in homes where a dear blood relation uses alcohol or drugs, have a superior propensity for developing the dependence afterward, generally because the family is more relaxed in terms of drugs use. The result of alcohol or drug abuse on relations involved and results may differ between families based on a numerous factors. Families affected by substance abuse have one thing in comparison; they reside in homes where traits

Chemical dependency or rather drug abuse can bring an adverse change in the relationships with family and loved ones. Addictions affect chemicals in the brain which may lead to a change in the behavior of the drug abuser. Chemical dependants need help from outside so that they can recognize that they have an addiction problem as well as remaining sober from the substance. This paper discusses the issue of chemical dependency and the family. It will look at the various appropriate measures of intervention for addictive families. It will also look at the barriers that are associated with educating families and how they can be overcome. Secondly there will be identification of family behaviors that can cause harm and not help the addict. Finally the issue of how family members can negatively impact treatment outcomes will also be looked at.

Addiction is a disease that not only affects the person with the addiction but the family as well. The children that grow up in this environment take on different roles in their family to try and cope with their environment. According to American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, there is an estimate of 26.8 million children that are exposed to alcoholism in the family (2015). As these children grow up they develop many common characteristics into adulthood. These characteristics have a lasting impact on their lives.

How Does Substance Abuse Affect the Family Unit? A Closer Look at What the Implications are and Treatment Options.

The cost of alcohol and substance abuse in the United States reaches heights of four hundred eighty four billion dollars per year (“Magnitude”). That’s about seven hundred eighty times the amount it cost to diagnose and treat sexually transmitted diseases in the year 2000 (Chesson). The sole purpose of this is not to persuade you one way or the other on this topic. Nor is the purpose to apologize for this social issue. The purpose of this writing is to employ data showing the societal effects parental addictions have on children, to show how this data has remained relevant in society, and to show how it is affecting our future members of society.

Since mothers usually take care of their children, attachment theory places the huge burden of responsibility for their children’s addictions on them. Höfler and Kooyman (1996) discussed the criticism that shows the gap between attachment theory and addiction. They noted that based on studies in the 1990s, good support and another caring adult can replace the presence of a mother apart from the reality that they can leave temporarily without damaging the child psychologically and socially. Citing Bronfenbrenner (1979), they explored the relevance of the ecological perspective of human development on addiction as it also underpins the role of cultural values and environmental differences in shaping human behaviour, including addictions (as cited in Höfler & Kooyman, 1996, p.

The user's distraction with the substance, in addition to its impacts on inclination and execution, can prompt conjugal issues and poor work execution or release. A growing body of literature suggests that substance misuse has unmistakable impacts on distinctive family structures. For instance, the guardian of little kids may endeavour to adjust for inadequacies that his or her substance‐abusing mate has created as an outcome of that substance misuse (Brown and Lewis 199).

The article that I chose from Nissen’s bibliography article is the role of family in preventing and intervening with substance use and misuse and family interventions that focus on young people. The article talks about how families plays a key part in helping prevent substance abuse and misuse by both promoting and encouraging safety and resilience. Young people are prone to become involved with drugs and not only harm themselves but their families as well. In the United States 12 percent of people in the population aged 12-17, have used some type of illicit drugs (Vellememan, Templeton & Copello, 2004). Young people are easily influenced into the use and misuse of substance abuse. When the child has a close family bond and a positive relationship with family, that closeness has been found to discourage their choices to try drugs and alcohol through positive reinforcements within the family structure. There is evidence that children who are from single parent

Drug addiction is a serious issue in not only America today, but globally. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, substance addiction is a “chronic, relapsing brain disease that is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, despite the harmful consequences” (“What is drug addiction?”). Drug abuse affects not only the user, but those around the user as well. The actions of a drug user place a significant amount of worry on the people that are closest to them such as friends and family. Children with parents who are addicted to drugs or alcohol can be severely affected by the actions of their parents which can cause them much harm in terms of biological and

Substance Abuse is a prominent issue in our society and always will be, but it is important to look at not only the user, but also who else is affected by substance abuse. Adolescents are put at an unfair advantage and are often exposed to substances at a very young age, which could predict their future of addiction. Research shows that at least two thirds of all child protective service cases involve caregivers or parents that have a substance abuse problem. I believe that it is a persons right to ruin their own life, but it takes a very selfish person to knowingly ruin the life of children around them. I believe it is important to look at all the negative affects a caregivers abuse can have on adolescents in order to understand how

The piece of research we chose as a group is called “Parents who use drugs: Accounting for damage and its limitation” and it was conducted by 3 different researchers – Tim Rhodes, Sarah Bernays and Kathrin Houmoller in London. The overall purpose of this particular piece of research is to identify the overall affects parental drugs misuse has on children and the family as a whole. The research looks at the affects this has on the child’s behaviour, the attachment between the child and the primary caregiver, the household stability and how the child is being cared for. The UK has the highest recorded statistics of individuals abusing drugs and records show that the

Sometimes that I learned about the article was, that some drug addict can be very harmful to children. Some kids are even scared to be around their own parents because of their drug addiction. It also talks about how kids are even afraid that their own schoolmates find out that their parents are drug addicts. Also, many drug addiction care about their families, but need or have the urge to feed their addiction so it seems that they don’t care but in reality they do. " Substance misuse may be one of a series of inter-related factors within a family, such as poverty or depression, so that disentangling exactly what causes poor outcomes for the child can be difficult,"(Hart 9 ). In other words, children do not really understand why their