How the Family Members of Addicts Become Dysfunctional by Ken P
Nobody escapes paying the price for alcoholism, drug addiction, and codependency in society. Even if you are fortunate enough not to be a drinker at a level that is diseased, (about 10% of our population drinks enough to hamper their daily performance) or one of the four adults who are in line daily enabling one who is (i.e., 48% of all adults over the age of 18 were either directly impacted by a diseased drinker as they grew up, or are being effected at the moment), then you are paying for the disease through higher taxes and insurance rates.
It requires four reasonably functioning people to maintain a single non-functioning addict. These four others are forced to practice a unique sharing of the lies that form the spider web supporting the addict. In truth, these four usually come from the addicted person's immediate family. These are the people who pay the highest price of all for addiction, with the possible exception of the addict. Let's take a closer look at these people.
First, there has to be one primary enabler. For alcoholic women, for example, this is typically a high functioning husband, a wealthy father, or a boss who spreads the work the alcoholic doesn’t do among many other workers. In time these dysfunctional enablers are sucked into the alcoholism vortex because alcoholism is a disease that is progressive. It creeps into systems slowly over many years. As the alcoholic gradually declines in functional capacity others, in terribly subtle ways, take up the slack.
Maybe in the early days the drunk or hung over wife’s husband will cover for her by doing routine chores. He prepares more meals, washes more clothes, or stands in as the only parent during back-to-school night. Here is the husband taking his kids to the pediatrician, or playing with them at the park while mom is at home throwing up, or, less dramatically, she’s “…just too tired.” These are what my sons and I used to call “one of those Saturdays.”
Those Saturdays start like this.
“You guys just go ahead and go. I have to stay home with this headache.”
The reasons for the headache are as diverse as the alcoholic’s imagination, but whenever she manages to shift her guilt to anybody else (usually her husband and/or kids), she makes them responsible instead of her alcoholism. And they all accept the terms!
The husband hears her bad mood like this;
“She is mad at me because of the fight we had last night when I said that awful thing about her mother.”
The oldest daughter, who is probably in the super-enabler role, might interpret this as;
“Mom is upset this morning because I didn’t do enough of the housework yesterday.”
Little brother, who might be in the disappearing child or mascot role might translate;
“Mommy is mad because I wet the bed again last night and she has to stay home to wash the sheets.”
The important truth that they all must ignore is that none of their guilt-ridden reasons apply. Their mother and wife has gone months now without feeling good. She hurts inside…physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. She lives in a world parallel to that of her husband, where the single goal each moment is to minimize pain. But for her part, she has the added burden of minimizing the pain while planning every event to coincide with her need for the security she knows only the bottle can provide.
Here is a beautifully right on description of the “hunger” taken from Caroline Knapp’s best selling book, Dinking, A Love Story.
“The need is more than merely physical: it’s psychic and visceral and multi-layered. There’s a dark fear to the feeling of wanting that wine, that vodka, that bourbon: a hungry abiding fear of being without, being exposed without your armor. In (AA) meetings you often hear people say that by definition, an addict is someone who seeks physical solutions to emotional or spiritual problems. I suppose that’s an intellectual way of describing that brand of fear, and the instinctive response that accompanies it: there’s a sense of deep need, and the response is a grabbiness, a compulsion to latch onto something outside of yourself in order to assuage some deep discomfort.”
(PP 58)
So the whole family is in the tight grip of the lady’s deep need for alcohol. That is why program people call it “a family disease.” The great lie, the great secret kept by everybody, is that the lady of the house is an alcoholic. The issue is beyond a moral question, beyond shame. It is an absolute. It is refusal by everyone in the family to be willing to admit this truth, even deep within themselves. This refusal perpetuates everybody’s pain.
Both partners in the addiction dance are highly subject to what retailers call POP, or point of purchase advertising. This dynamic involves a momentary feeling of happiness that comes when some eye-appealing object is seen on the store shelf and immediately purchased. At the height of our disease process, Deb and I were having garage sales every month because we both bought so much junk. It was always just “stuff,” like books, bobbles, and beads. That did no help our financial situation either. I eventually learned to check myself by asking myself a question every time I started to buy some new toy. I would ask myself…”how much will I get for this in the next garage sale?”
When this evolves into making major purchases such as cars, it can lead to a common outcome with addiction…bankruptcy. I once heard a wise AA quote his sponsor about this form of self destruction. His sponsor told him;
“You are broke all of the time because you keep buying things you don’t need with money you don’t have trying to impress people you don’t know!”
If you recognize yourself or someone you love int his description of a dysfunctional family, THERE IS HELP! Call Al-Anon or Nar-A-Non to learn where there are meetings right in your community...right now!
Al-Anonis at 1-888-4AL-ANON.
Nar-A-Non is at 1-800-477-6291.
