Whether we like it or not, we are all susceptible to co-dependency - the need to control another person in our life.
In this podcast, we offer the following insights on the various aspects of co-dependency, especially important when addressing what happens in families who are experiencing addiction at home.
No one is immune
No one in the family is immune from the effects of addiction or alcoholism when the disorder appears and lives inside one of the family members. That is why the professionals in the space call addiction or alcoholism (often it's both) a family disease. Why is that so?
First, the family suffers from a lack of education about the disease, so family members become unwitting players in a psychodrama written and directed by the addict/alcoholic, or more accurately, by the disease itself.
What does the addiction want? Above and beyond anything, it wants to be fed so that it can sustain itself and grow. And grow it will, for it is a voracious beast that needs more and more of the substance by which it is nourished.
We know very well that addicts need ever-increasing amounts of whatever substances they are addicted to, to get high, and they seek new substances and combinations thereof to get to the elusive nirvana they are chasing.
I know for myself that I needed a 12-pack of beer before I could begin to feel anything going on, and so the same can be true of us drinkers as well. To tell the truth, beer was my gateway drug to marijuana, so there goes the "marijuana is the gateway" theory.
All of the above is going on in the family without the "sober" members realising it, and they have started to "dance with the devil", as I often put it. They resort to trying to control the addict's use, lie to protect their job, dispose of the drugs, angrily confront them, resent them when they do not behave, blame them or others for the way it is now; they fear for the future and for the welfare of their loved one.
What is happening? The family has caught the disease and is now acting in irrational ways to try to control what they are powerless over.
That is what we mean when we say that no one in the family is immune to the disease. It will continue to ravage the family until and unless someone who has had quite enough cries out for help. Only then can the healing begin.
Whether we like it or not, we are all susceptible to co-dependency - the need to control another person in our life.
In this podcast, we offer the following insights on the various aspects of co-dependency, especially important when addressing what happens in families who are experiencing addiction at home.
No one is immune
No one in the family is immune from the effects of addiction or alcoholism when the disorder appears and lives inside one of the family members. That is why the professionals in the space call addiction or alcoholism (often it's both) a family disease. Why is that so?
First, the family suffers from a lack of education about the disease, so family members become unwitting players in a psychodrama written and directed by the addict/alcoholic, or more accurately, by the disease itself.
What does the addiction want? Above and beyond anything, it wants to be fed so that it can sustain itself and grow. And grow it will, for it is a voracious beast that needs more and more of the substance by which it is nourished.
We know very well that addicts need ever-increasing amounts of whatever substances they are addicted to, to get high, and they seek new substances and combinations thereof to get to the elusive nirvana they are chasing.
I know for myself that I needed a 12-pack of beer before I could begin to feel anything going on, and so the same can be true of us drinkers as well. To tell the truth, beer was my gateway drug to marijuana, so there goes the "marijuana is the gateway" theory.
All of the above is going on in the family without the "sober" members realising it, and they have started to "dance with the devil", as I often put it. They resort to trying to control the addict's use, lie to protect their job, dispose of the drugs, angrily confront them, resent them when they do not behave, blame them or others for the way it is now; they fear for the future and for the welfare of their loved one.
What is happening? The family has caught the disease and is now acting in irrational ways to try to control what they are powerless over.
That is what we mean when we say that no one in the family is immune to the disease. It will continue to ravage the family until and unless someone who has had quite enough cries out for help. Only then can the healing begin.