family members are undermined, and there is a tendency towards interfamilial violence, along with economic hardships, health problems, impaired social functioning, and frequent clashes with the law-enforcements authorities” (pg. 404). Because the children of addicted parents are “a population at risk,” they need support and therapeutic treatment from outside sources other than family. Group intervention for young children appears to be the best approach because of the peer interaction and they learn how to socialize among others. During the group setting, the children can learn how to emotionally react with their peers while feeling safe by adults facilitating the group. This group dynamic helps the children out by also letting them feel
n the essay “Embraced by the needle” by Gabor Mate, he highlights how an individualès childhood experiences would make them more susceptible to addiction in their future. He highlights if an individual experienced a traumatic, neglectful, or stressful environment in their childhood they are more vulnerable to addiction as adults. If children grew up in relatively stable and loving homes, but still grow up to become addicts, then there are other underlying factors, like stressed parents, that cause them to turn to vices like drugs or alcohol that lead them to addiction. Maté focuses on events that happened in an individual’s childhood and how they developed from it, and discusses the biology of addiction and how without some key experiences in an individual’s childhood it will lead to addiction because “the fewer endorphin exchanging experiences in infancy and early childhood, the greater the need for external sources” (289). Drugs like cocaine or benzodiazepine imitate or inhibit the reabsorption of endorphins, reaffirming that in Maté’s perspective addictions are caused by pain and unhappiness. Bruce K Alexander’s perspective on addiction and drug abuse in Reframing Canada’s “Drug Problem” is that of dislocation. He describes dislocation as being “the absence of that essential integration and identification with family, community, society and spiritual values that makes a “straight” life bearable most of them time and joyful at its peaks.” (226). When individuals are
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
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.
The majority of children living in a dysfunctional family with a drug addicted parent will not develop a secure attachment with another individual, where the relationship revolves around intimacy and mutual understanding. Parents who are codependent on each other have learned to regard the dysfunction as normal, and their children could be susceptible to numerous scenarios. They could become the target of their parent’s abuse, either sexual or physical. The children of codependent parents could easily gain access to drugs or alcohol since no one is paying attention to the child. The codependent parents are preoccupied with the alcoholic or drug addicted parent, and they might never bother to realize their child is in grave danger. The codependent parent’s children might never recover fully from the trauma, abuse, or neglect inflicted on them. In addition, the children learn to become adults who repeat the vicious cycle of domestic violence or abuse themselves. Children of codependent parent might grow resilient despite
Watching A Mother's Desperation and The Adolescent Addict, I noticed that both parents said that at first they would get upset and their child would lash out at them, than go find their drug of choice. Living with someone else’s addiction puts the family under unusual stress. Normal routines are constantly being interrupted by unexpected events or frightening kinds of experiences. The family has to keep track of what is going on all the time because there is no trust, the child steals and will do whatever they need to do to get their drug of choice. For the parents and even siblings it has to be draining, heartbreaking, nerve-racking and even scary because you do not know if your child will come home or even wake up in the morning. My opinion
Although all sorts of families can be devastated by addiction, but single parent units (the most common lower class structure) are the most obscured. Behavioral Health of the Palm Beaches supports, “In every family unit, each person plays a role (or multiple roles) to help the family function better and to maintain a level of homeostasis, stability and balance. When substance abuse is added to this dynamic, the family roles naturally shift to adjust to the new behaviors associated with drug or alcohol use, and to continue maintaining order and balance.”4 In single parent units there is an inability of a second parent to fill the void role of the addicted parent. The National Center for Biotechnology Information states, “Frequently, children may act as surrogate spouses for the parent who abuses substances. For example, [young] children may develop elaborate systems of denial to protect themselves against that reality of the parent’s addiction. Because that option does not exist in a single‐parent household with a parent who abuses substances, children are likely to behave in a manner that is not age‐appropriate to compensate for the parental deficiency.”2 So a child growing up in a compromised family unit where addiction is present may develop altered norms and mature into an addict themselves.4
Drug addiction puts a lot of stress on other family members because the addict cannot be trusted and will do anything they can to get drugs (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2017). Drug use around children is a risk for child abuse and neglect (Taylor, Coall, Marquis & Batten, 2016). Many times, parents that have drug addictions cannot adequately care for their young, and this burden is usually left to the grandparents to raise their own grandchildren (Taylor, Coall, Marquis & Batten, 2016). In regards to the financial cost of this epidemic, results found including rates of emergency room visits and substance abuse treatment admissions cost the American people $72.5 billion dollars in 2007 (Volkow, 2014). In 2016, the cost has risen to 78.5 billion dollars (HealthDay, 2017).
Families everywhere are affected by someone close to them abusing drugs. Substance abuse no matter what it may be, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, takes a huge toll on the health of the user and the family as well. The number of overdoses on heroin in West Virginia hit an all-time peak last year with twenty-seven in four hours. Having a parent who is too busy out doing drugs rather than spending time or taking care of their children is one of the worst feelings in the world. Having a son or daughter who is out all night, or gone for days, is one of the scariest feelings. Past trauma sometimes causes addiction. That damage gets spread to those close to the abuser, and passed down to their children. There are many reasons that a person may become
Along with illegal behavior often a substance abuser will find themselves as homeless, spending their paychecks on their habits of using substances (Tracy, 2005). Children of abusers are affected by both possessing negative role models that set the example that drug use is not wrong and sometimes the children are placed into the care of the community because of neglect and abuse by the substance user (National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Adolescent and School Health [CDC], 2009). Other medical, social, and economic issues also are being experienced from substance abuse and use.
Family and close relationships are dramatically affected by someone who is an addict. The close individuals are brought into a world that they may not even know they are entering. Therefore, it can cause a number of psychological and behavioral problems they were not prepared for. Depending on the families boundary system the change that is happening can be smooth or rigid. Those family systems that display rigid boundaries have the most difficult adapting to an addict (Lewis, 2013). Addicts are not predictable which can cause chaos in a rigid environment.
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.
Addicted parents spend a significant amount of time searching for drugs or alcohol and must spend time to obtain money to pay for their “fixes” whether by illegal or legal means. They have to have time to recover from hangovers or withdrawal symptoms. This constant cycle of obtaining, using and coming down from drugs leaves little time left over for their children. Social systems are overwhelmed by the number of children which need care from someone other than their addicted parents. Approximately, eighty percent of the children who enter foster care come from homes of addicted parents (Taylor 2011). Their stay in foster care is lengthened by the need for their parents to meet judicial rehabilitation requirements before being returned to their homes. In addition, these children having come from non-supportive and abusive environments require foster parents who are able to cope with issues of behavioral
Substance abuse and addiction have become a social problem that afflicts millions of individuals and disrupts the lives of their families and friends. Just one example reveals the extent of the problem: in the United States each year, more women and men die of smoking related lung cancer than of colon, breast and prostate cancers combined (Kola & Kruszynski, 2010). In addition to the personal impact of so much illness and early death, there are dire social costs: huge expenses for medical and social services; millions of hours lost in the workplace; elevated rates of crime associated with illicit drugs; and scores of children who are damaged by their parents’ substance abuse behavior (Lee, 2010). This paper will look at
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
Accroding to Jackson, Usher and O’Brien [15] reported “That families are fractured by adolescent substance use when the adolescent has “serious and on-going illicit drug use.” (p. 323). They add that substance use touches all aspects of family life. This includes parents who are feeling that the family is being torn apart while also experiencing the youth as “complex, demanding, overwhelming and highly stressful” (p. 323). Lee, Philip R., Dorothy R. Lee, and Paul Lee. 2010: U.S. Drug and Alcohol Policy, Looking Back and Moving Forward. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2010.In the Western countries such as Thailand,Vietnam,China are one of the highest countries in the world who have deal with alcoholic drinkers is increased significant every year.Government should set a law for a country to save society and people lives in building home or club to rescue alcohol addicts be back to normal life by sharing in facebook or twitter social network with those precious experience to abandon alcoholic permanently. Although people known alcohol addicts are frivolous but as the human that they cannot try to shift the blame for them because there are many unexpected condition that they don’t want to be happen for themselves such as something like hardship in bussines, broken relationship, family pressure, advertising of social media.