Addicted To The Addicted Family?

My family struggles with addiction. We have battled with alcoholism, drug use, eating disorders and hoarding, just to name a few compulsions.

Indeed, in the context of survival mode, various family members have gravitated to the obvious temptations of alcohol or drugs. Mom, however, was not entangled in these addictions. Instead, she became the rescuer. She gave them money and lied for them whenever it was needed.

Mom ignored her own issues.

She could not see past her overweight body. She didn’t recognize her traumatic experiences, her struggles with depression and codependency. She was afraid and ashamed.

But, as long as another family member was out of control, she could focus on that chaos. She could believe she wasn’t like them. And, I suppose, with the boozing, drugging and reckless behaviors going on, Mom looked serene, normal and healthy by comparison.

She believed she was unaffected, simply by never being drunk, stoned or in any visible, legal or personal peril.

But this was not the case. Today, an elderly woman, she is regarded as “a vulnerable adult;” her health has been significantly changed. She is unable to walk of her own power. She cannot bathe, groom or get in and out of bed without two assists in her care facility.  I see how bewildered she is by her life. I have tried to talk to her about it. Not surprisingly, her response is that of a shutdown or nervous laughter.

It, in some respects, is too late. Barring Divine intervention, there is little which can be changed about her viewpoint and openness concerning addiction realities.

Our family disease includes not only the presence of “the addictive brain,” but also the pervasive abuse and misogyny permeating each generation and relationship. There is inequity and hypocrisy. There is harmful secret keeping.

It confronts each person’s need for personal responsibility in his/her own actions, addictions and recovery processes. That has been woefully hit and miss. And that refusal to acknowledge the greater sickness, along with the greater need for healing within the family body itself, thwarts authentic health altogether.

Without everyone’s participation, what merely exists is further wounding and scapegoating. It sets the family up for failure with its moral superiority, in statements like “well, at least I’m not like him/her...”

When it comes to addiction, all of us are affected. And we can be addicted to anything which keeps the protective mechanisms firmly in place.

However, when we do that, we are “part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

For now, most of my family’s alcohol and drug-fueled behaviors have subsided. Yet, there still is an oppressive undercurrent, one of shame and fear which refuses to face and own what has transpired.

“The truth shall set you free.”

John 8:32

When the individual and the family as a whole refuse to face truth, ugly truth, imprisonment results.

I need only look at my mother in her care facility to see that.

Copyright © 2020 by Sheryle Cruse