Ways family responds to addiction

Like tyrants the world over, the chemically dependent person (alcoholics, addicts and other compulsive people) present either/or terms to their family. They must use a chemical; it has become as important to them as oxygen, necessary for their survival, or so it seems. Therefore, they must impose their will upon others. So, it’s their way or no way. They rarely state their terms aloud, but they show them daily in their actions.

As their addictive forces contain extreme power, so do their defences. Their compulsion, obsession, and increasing tolerance manipulate them. Their defences control others. They are governed, and they govern – totally. Families have no choice; they must react; they can get out, adapt to their terms, or get help, but they must do something.

Some common responses are seen in family members who attempt to adapt to the alcoholic or addict.

Addicts and alcoholics all eventually use the same significant defences to one degree or another. But co-dependents (family members) exhibit a range of adaptations while governed by the addiction.

In the early stages of addiction, most family members will play down or minimize the alcoholic’s behaviour. They will excuse or rationalize their use of drugs, alcohol or other compulsive behaviours. They often project their feelings onto others by blaming, but unlike the dependents, most do not seem to regress to all the manifestations of the defence of projection. Instead, as the addiction progresses, they will add other reasons that, in time, will become their primary defences. Then, like the addicted persons, the family members will assume rigid attitudinal postures and behaviour. Rather than becoming tyrants, they become stoics, escape artists, obsessed, or saints. If they stay trapped in the addiction, many will regress further into illness and become martyrs.

Suppression: Strategy of the Stoics

Stoics may appear impassive, but they feel a lot – they do not readily show those feelings to others. Generally, if the mature defences are overused, the suppression will regress to a lower level of security. It’s as if their use of suppression is so effective that they have little need for others defences.

The use of suppression is often partially conscious, and of all the defences, it is the one most commonly used by most adult family members. From time to time, we all suppress a conflicted event; we know about the conflict, and we feel distressed, but we, semi-consciously or otherwise, put off dealing with it. It is only the stoics apparently among us, however, who use suppression repeatedly and rigidly against the never-ending crisis of addiction in the family.

The family members are frequently devoted to willpower as their primary, if not only means for achieving success and dealing with life’s problems. Consequently, control of self and others is a dominant issue in their lives.

Because suppression integrates conflicts between one’s inner world and outer reality, it helps create a fragile sense of peace. Thus the family members who use this defence are not apt to seek assistance until driven to it. Though their lives hurt, their defence permits some comfort, and it is usually someone else’s urging that they seek professional support. During therapy, they typically respond well; suppression does not bury the pain.

The Escape Artists

The ‘escape artists’ energy seems boundless, and it can be exhausting just listening to their various escapades. Ostensibly they seek professional help but often concentrate on their escapades and not their problem. Their two primary defences, repression and dissociation, both neurotic levels, then alter their inner world and, as a result, keep them from facing their difficulties.

With repression, the family members forget that which they cannot bear. They put the memory of the problem aside, down, or under – anywhere but in their conscious realm. But, while they forget what happened, they remain vaguely distressed. Repression splits the conflict; the vent is ignored, but the feeling remains.

Family members of addicts who use heavy doses of repression and dissociation as a means of defending themselves against the addiction of their loved one often have dramatic personalities, measuring high on the scale of exhibitionism. They can express their emotions fully and appear marvellously spontaneous.

When they seek help, they frequently seek another means of escape, another way to extract themselves from their predicament.

The Obsessed

The escape artist type of family member lends themselves best to intellectualization and displacement. The escape artists needed to stop to think, so he could appropriately feel. The obsessed type needs to stop to feel, so he can more appropriately think.

Users of the defences of intellectualization and displacement often appear uptight and exhibit traits of excessive orderliness. Leaning toward stubbornness and overscrupulousness, they are rigid in their attention to details those others consider insignificant. They have difficulty expressing their feelings but are pretty adept at verbalizing their ideas.

An addiction therapist at Hope Trust recalls a case:

“Shanta came to her first appointment with several typed sheets of paper outlining in detail the history, progression and present state of her husband’s drinking. She read off to me exactly how much her husband drank every day and how she marked his bottles and measured his consumption. She listed the hours of the day when she would call him from work and find him sober and the hours when she could find him drunk. She described exactly how she helped him to bed each night and the various means she “almost” had him weekend drinking ‘under control’. She reposted how she would caution her children on what to say to him not to upset him.

So many words, but not one mention of her distress! Before Shanta completed her pages with all her details, I asked her to stop for a moment and tell me how she felt in response to her husband’s alcoholism. She immediately went into a convoluted and one-sided discussion about the various definitions of alcoholism. While she thought one or two definitions fit somehow, none included in all forms. Before she could proceed to her description of all the ways the various definitions did not fit, I asked, “Shanta, how do you feel when he’s drunk?” But she again didn’t hear me, and I knew it would be a while before she could. For her, feeling meant thinking.”

That’s the way it is with some co-dependents. The defence of intellectualization allows them to put aside their feelings. They split conflicts just like persons who repress. Rather than burying the idea of the conflict as in the curious forgetting of repression, intellectualizers suppress the associated emotions and remember the event. Then, by compulsively paying strict attention to the many details of these events, intellectualizers can adjust their inner, unfelt chaos to their outer orderliness.

The Saints

Maneka, another client at Hope Trust, had no doubts about her husband’s alcoholism. While her husband apparently did not drink during work hours, his hands frequently shook at breakfast, and he felt too sick to eat. He had also been having problems at work.

Their social life had also become virtually nonexistent. Maneka had so frequently been embarrassed by his behaviour with friends that she no longer made social engagements. She also attended all the kids’ school functions without her husband, again not wanting others to see him in a drunken state.

Maneka reported several occasions during the preceding two years when her husband had attempted to cut down or stop drinking altogether. “He never stayed cut down for long, and I don’t think he ever made more than a week without alcohol. He always says that he can stop any time he wants, but I can see now that he can’t stay stopped.”

Her husband also started having blackouts. He would not remember last night’s conversations or phone calls.

Her husband’s addiction had become very clear, but so had Maneka’s adaptive response. Throughout the therapy sessions, she appeared “scattered” and said she felt helpless. She was, in fact, very much in control and incredibly competent. Rather than either telling or showing her feelings about the trauma in her life, she reported events. Over the years, her husband became increasingly irresponsible, and Maneka became super responsible. While his attitude had become care-a-damn, she had become super-serious. And super sweet. She was heavily in the neurotic defence of reaction formation, the creator of saints.

Seeking Help

If a loved one has to be helped out of addiction, it makes sense to start with the family member’s recovery. Unless the co-dependent is strong and realistic, they cannot expect their addicted partner to be strong and practical.

Intervention is an effective way to get the addicted person into recovery. The family member should consult with a specialist to navigate the puzzling and challenging road to addiction recovery for self, and the loved one.