Family & Parents of Addicts: Help Yourselves!

For years, the family members and parents of addicts have put their lives on hold. All of their plans, dreams, and goals have been pushed aside to deal with their loved ones’ addictions. Rather than pursuing their hobbies, education, and career aspirations, they’ve been nursing and rescuing addicts. Their money goes to treatment centers, lawyers, and bailouts rather than anything else they want of need. A good night’s sleep has become a distant memory for them. They live their lives not in the joy of the present moment, but in fear of tomorrow and remorse for yesterday.

Help for Families & Parents of Addicts

It’s clear that addiction affects far more than the addict. It hurts the boyfriends, girlfriends, brothers, sisters, friends, co-workers, and parents of addicts. Addiction is so all-consuming that there’s a whole host of 12 step programs dedicated to helping anyone who’s ever known an addict! You may have heard of these programs, of which there are many: Al-Anon, Alateen, and Naranon, just to name a few.

What are These Programs?

The first support group of this type was Al-Anon, which was founded by Lois Wilson in 1951. Lois’s husband, Bill W. had co-founded AA to help other struggling alcoholics find recovery. As someone who had experience the pain and horrors of addiction firsthand, Lois realized that the alcoholic himself was only one factor in recovery. Since the whole family had suffered, the whole family deserved to recover.

Who Do These Programs Help?

Al-Anon was founded by the wife of an alcoholic, but its primary purpose is to help all the innocent victims who’ve been hurt by alcoholism. This includes wives, but also includes any friends, acquaintances, and other family such as the parents of addicts. The group Alateen later formed to specifically help the teenage children of alcoholism, as growing up with an alcoholic parent comes with its own particular scars and traumas. Similarly, groups such as Nar-Anon and Narateen have formed to help the families and children of addicts with more drug-oriented problems, rather than alcoholism.

How Are the Friends, Families & Parents of Addicts Helped?

Many people come into Al-Anon or other groups, but aren’t looking to help themselves. Instead, they are still caught up in co-dependent and enabling patterns, devoting all their energy to their addicted loved one. They are looking for lawyers to keep their addicts out of jail. They are looking for bankers to get their addicts out of debt. They are looking for therapists and intervention counselors to help their addicts get treatment.

Al-Anon, Alateen, and others do not provide any of these services. Their primary purpose is to help you, not the addict. Addiction is a powerful disease, and we cannot control how it will affect our loved ones. But we can help ourselves, we can find acceptance and serenity and learn to break the cycle of powerless and abuse that we’ve suffered. We can get better, and hopefully our new way of life will rub off on our loved ones. Even if it doesn’t, at least we can honestly say that we have recovered and found a better way of life.