The Effects of Drug Addiction on Family Members & Relationships
When your child, parent, sibling, or other loved one is battling addiction, it doesn’t just affect them; addiction is a family disease, and it reaches beyond just the addicted person. Think about the time you’ve enabled your loved one’s harmful behavior by paying their rent, burned yourself out shuffling them in and out of rehab or jail, or felt guilty about setting a much-needed boundary. These are just a few examples of the far-reaching effects of drug addiction on family members and relationships, and it impacts countless families across the country.
Since 2016, our certified addiction counselors and licensed therapists have helped thousands of patients repair their family relationships. These specialists have provided the most important effects of drug addiction on family members that you should be aware of to help you find the tools to regain control of your family and your own life.
The Effects of Drug Addiction on Family Members: 5 Areas
Addiction puts a strain on children, spouses and partners, parents, and general family connections. Children may struggle to bond with their siblings, parents may feel responsible for their child’s problem, partners may undergo codependency, or extended family may feel helpless.
No matter how you look at it, the effects of addiction are felt by all, not just by the person suffering from addiction. With that, there are 5 main areas of the effects of drug addiction on family members:
- Shifting family roles towards the addicted person
- Deepening financial strain
- Household and relational toxicity
- Feelings of guilt or burden
- Behavioral changes in family members
Understanding these 5 areas can help you better understand how addiction impacts your family and find ways to overcome these challenges.
1. Shifting Family Roles Towards the Addicted Person
Everyone in a family plays a role, whether they realize it or not. This role, whatever it may be, helps to maintain balance within the family; for instance, one person might be a lighthearted joke-maker while the other keeps order among the chaos, and so on.
However, these roles shift when there’s someone in the family with a drug problem. Not only does the family lose an important role that person once played, but they also shift the dynamic to make up for it. As families adjust to life with addiction, they tend to fall into 6 new roles:
- The Enabler – This person will take care of what the addicted person leaves undone, including finances, childcare, and making excuses on behalf of the person. They’re likely to deny the reality of drug use and will keep making excuses for them.
- The Hero – This person takes on responsibilities beyond their means. They’ll assume a parental role and aim for perfection, an unrealistic expectation that will get increasingly difficult as addiction gets worse.
- The Scapegoat – This person is already known for disruptive or chaotic behavior. Often, this person will be the target of misplaced blame for the actions of the addicted person.
- The Mascot – This is someone who tries to make light of an uncomfortable or unhealthy home environment, often using humor as a coping mechanism. They’ll usually continue this pattern of behavior to distract everyone from the severity of the situation.
- The Lost Child – A lost child becomes isolated from the rest of the group and may have trouble forging strong relationships as a result of someone’s substance abuse.
- The Addicted Individual – This person may feel regret, guilt, or shame, while others feel no remorse or have no desire to cease their drug use. This can build upon the resentment already present among other family members, making relationships even more strained.
It’s crucial to reflect on these roles in your family and understand how your own role has changed, adapted, and affected the addicted person. We recommend viewing our webinar, “Family Dysfunction & The Roles We Play,” to explore more about these roles.
2. Deepening Financial Strains
Financial instability is a common effect of drug addiction since drug or alcohol abuse requires a large financial investment. When the addicted person is compulsively using, they may use money intended for other things to get their fix or even start hiding money for illicit use. Then, they may seek out money from family members, often lying, stealing, or manipulating to get their way.
Think about a time when you’ve had a major shift in your finances because of the addicted person. Maybe you’ve had to dip into your retirement fund to bail out a sibling from a drug-related incident. Or maybe you’ve had hundreds randomly taken from you and your spouse’s joint bank account. These incidents can add up, making it one of the more impactful and noticeable effects of drug addiction on family members.
When these strains occur, it’s important to know how to set boundaries with someone with an addiction and put yourself and the family first.
3. Household & Relational Toxicity
Households exposed to addiction are impacted in various ways, often depending on the addicted person. Regardless, toxicity can permeate the family, manifesting in a few harmful ways.
Enabling the Cycle of Addiction
Children often suffer the most damaging effects of addiction in the family. Children who live in a home with addicted individuals are especially susceptible, with over 1 in 10 children living with an alcoholic parent. While problems can manifest while the child is living with the person, issues arrive in adulthood, leading to their own likely struggles with addiction, depreciating self-image, and engaging in dangerous behaviors.
Presence of Codependency
Codependency describes someone who is too emotionally or psychologically involved with someone else’s life to their own detriment. With addiction, codependency causes a dysfunctional relationship where a person puts their needs aside for someone with an addiction, despite any detrimental consequences it may have.
Codependency is one of the major ways drug addiction affects relationships. This can look like your spouse being dependent on you for money to not just finance their habit, but also finance most aspects of their life. In families, codependency can lead to irreparable relationship damage, financial harm, and increasingly negative self-esteem.
4. Feelings of Guilt or Burden
As a family member, discovering that someone you love has a drug or alcohol problem is a hard reality to face. Parents question their role in the disease, blaming themselves for their past parenting decisions, or children may feel like they’re burdening their parents. Guilt and shame are common feelings for any loved one watching addiction enter their family, making it more difficult to find the right help.
5. Behavioral Changes in Family Members
Another one of the more noticeable effects of drug addiction on family members is behavioral changes. When someone is struggling with addiction, they isolate themselves, lash out, or withdraw from people and things. This causes family members to adjust their own behavior to compensate for the shift, often negatively; a child may feel the need to pick up the slack, parents may become depressed, siblings may begin to mistrust each other, and so on.
Getting Help for the Effects of Drug Addiction on Family Members
Knowing how to help someone with a drug addiction is already daunting, and feeling the effects of drug addiction on family members can exacerbate the issue. We understand that these effects can impact how you manage life and find the right help for your loved one.
But there are resources for you. We offer a Family & Friends Program where you can get free resources from our addiction specialists on life with addiction, including a library of books, movies, and webinars on addiction, a database of community support groups, and closed group therapy. We also have a free downloadable e-book for you with our best articles on navigating life with addiction and how you can best support yourself and your loved one.
The most important thing for your family is to remain patient, compassionate, understanding, and protective. Avoiding enabling, setting boundaries, getting support resources, and taking care of yourself are some of the ways you can manage the effects of drug addiction on family members. We encourage you to explore our Family & Friends Program today to get the tools to get your life and your family system back on track in the face of addiction.
About Master Center
Master Center is a groundbreaking addiction treatment program headquartered in Glen Allen, Va. Based on a vision of comprehensive outpatient care, Master Center was launched in 2016 and now includes locations throughout the Commonwealth.
Master Center offers a coordinated, multidisciplinary approach rarely seen in the outpatient setting, staffed by experienced addiction physicians, psychiatrists, counselors, therapists, and peer recovery coaches.
