My Parent Is An Addict

As children of addicts, it’s important to remember that addiction is a disease. This is because chronic substance use causes changes in the chemistry of an addict’s brain. As a result, the brains of addicts become rewired overtime. This causes addicts to exhibit poor judgment and decision making, a lack of self-control, and abnormal behavior choices.

Because the mind of an addict becomes rewired, quitting substances is more difficult than it appears. By the time someone develops an addiction, his or her brain is dependent on drugs or alcohol to function. Thus, when addicts minimize or discontinue their use of substances, they can experience severe withdrawal symptoms that are unbearable. The fear of experiencing such withdrawal symptoms often deter addicts from wanting to get sober.

Even when an addict does become sober from substances for a while, the disease never completely goes away. Thus, recovering addicts must be proactive on a day to day basis about maintaining their sobriety. Otherwise, recovering addicts can easily relapse.

Therefore, as much as you might despise your parent for behaving the way that he or she does and not getting sober, take a deep breath and remember that your parent is suffering from an actual disease. To help your parent overcome his or her addiction, it will take time, just like it’ll take time for you to overcome the damage that having a parent that’s an addict has caused in your life.

When you’re a child of an addict, your life gets turned upside down. If you’re a child or teen, having a parent who’s an addict can cause you to grow up too fast. Having a parent who’s an addict as a child or adolescent can also cause you to develop toxic behavior patterns and coping mechanisms. This is because one of the primary examples of how to act in your life suffered from a toxic disease.

There are certain struggles that many children of addicts go through that few people can understand. Thus, children of addicts must understand what they’ve gone through themselves so that they can treat and manage their own conditions.

Role Reversal

Children of addicts often reverse roles with their parents due to their addicted parents’ inability to lead a family. As a result, children of addicts start to take on all of the responsibilities of a parent. This forces these children to grow up too fast.

The role reversal that occurs in children of addicts starts off small. For example, it might start off with the child of an addict cleaning up after his or her addicted parent one day. Over time, though, behaviors like this start to become a pattern. Before you know it, children of addicts are cleaning up after their parents and cooking for their siblings every day. Children of addicts may also get a job at an early age to help their addicted parents pay the bills.

When children start to parent their addicted parent and younger siblings as a child or teenager, it causes emotional scars. Often, children don’t notice these scars until they reach adulthood. As a result, adult children of addicts are often overcome with feelings of anger and resentment towards their addicted parent. Part of the resentment that adult children of addicts feel comes from feeling like their addicted parents stole their childhood.

Children of addicts also tend to struggle with identity, maturity, and self-esteem issues later in life. This is because they didn’t get to go through all the proper phases of social development that children and adolescents normally go through.

Physical And Behavioral Effects Of Role Reversal

There are negative physical and behavioral effects that a parenting role reversal can cause on children of addicts as well. Part of the reason why these negative physical and behavioral effects occur is that children of addicts don’t get to go through the proper phases of childhood and adolescence. Another reason for the occurrence of these negative effects is that children of addicts learn poor behavior habits from their addicted parents.

For example, children may exhibit behavioral problems due to learning poor coping mechanisms from their addicted parents. Children of addicts may also develop poor social skills due to not getting to go through normal social experiences. Such poor social skills can cause children to develop low self-esteem and mental illnesses like depression or anxiety.

All of these emotional, mental, and behavioral struggles can also cause children to struggle in school. The combination of these struggles can even cause children of addicts to start to abuse drugs and alcohol to cope. Before you know it, these children end up in situations that cause them to experience more trauma and abuse.

While many children of addicts end up going through the negative effects of role reversal, this isn’t always the case. If children of addicts have a proper support system elsewhere and good resources to turn to, they can make it to adulthood without experiencing many of these effects.

There are certain measures that you can take to minimize the amount of negative effects that you experience as a child of an addict. Some of these key measures are described below.

Whether you’re a young child or adolescent of someone with an addiction or an adult child of someone with an addiction, the time may come when you’ll need to stage an intervention. To do this, you’ll need to gather other close family members and friends of your addicted parent that he or she respects. You’re also going to need the assistance of a professional interventionist to guide you through the intervention process.

Just make sure that you and the other loved ones of your addicted parent prepare your intervention with a professional interventionist well in advance. Also, make sure that the professional interventionist is there to guide you before and during the actual intervention.

It’s important that your addicted parent is sober during his or her intervention. That way he or she can better take in what you’re saying. It’s also important that you’re clear and direct about what you expect from your addicted parent after the intervention is over. Once you’ve done that, you should suggest rehab centers for your addicted parent to attend.

At Harmony Ridge Recovery Center, we understand the impact that addiction can have on the family members of addicts. That’s why we offer family therapy to all of our patients. Some of the other addiction treatment and therapy services that we offer here at Harmony Ridge include detox services, specialized rehab programs for a wide variety of substances, and medication-assisted and holistic addiction treatment.

To learn more about the addiction treatment and therapy services that we offer here at Harmony Ridge Recovery Center, contact us today. Our staff is more than willing to answer any questions you may have.