According to the experts, the addiction is a family disease. But do you know what it actually means? It means that addiction doesn’t just affects the addicts, but also the entire family members located surrounding the addicts. Therefore, while any member of any family gets addicted to any addictive substance, then the total family system suffers and the mental and physical health of the family members, the finances, unity and the total family dynamics also get affected.
Role of family in addiction recovery
Addiction recovery is not something that can be done alone, especially, can’t be done successfully. According to the experts, it takes an entire family means the people, who are struggling with addiction, along with their friends, family members and the recovery team of the addiction treatment centres can make the recovery a complete reality.
Even in case the substance abuse is not present within any family, every family is so different that it is not possible to treat the addiction in the similar way. Though the family roles in addiction can be quite complex, but the family support team of the addiction treatment centres can help people in this matter.
How the role of family in addiction recovery is judged
- Learning the addiction history of any family: In the addiction recovery centers, the experts take the time to understand the family, how each person is impacted by addiction, for how long and what type of damage to the relationships has taken place. The family support is meant for both the adults and the kids. Younger kids may have never known the life without the addiction of the family and require specific help in recreating a new relationship with the parent in recovery. This is the reason why it becomes really important to define the role of families in substance abuse.
- Role of family in addiction: Every family member of every addict has a specific role to deal with substance abuse. In some cases, these roles can look really necessary or helpful, while in fact that these roles support the addictive behaviors of their loved ones and causing different problems and stress for themselves in the entire procedure. This thing is also known as co-dependency, a dysfunctional method of relating to others.
But what you may not be aware of is that co-dependency is a really important thing to identify to get positive family roles in addiction to be effective.