Our society is quick to judge parents for the things their children do. This is never more true than in the case of addictions.
In Hope for Parents With Addicted Loved Ones, we spend several chapters answering this question, looking at the various models, answering the objections and concerns, etc. We also look at how much influence as parents you actually had. The truth is sometimes as parents we do things that influence our children’s behavior, we both know it. And there are some parents who do absolutely horrible things to their children which make addiction the likely outcome. We also know that those parents are not likely to be the kind of parents searching for answers, trying to figure out what to do next. But you are, or else you would not be here reading this now, which proves that you are not one of those “horrible parents”.
You are the typical parent, who loves their child and is trying to figure out how to help. Who is up late at night, beating him or herself up, trying to figure out what you did that was so wrong. As the typical parent, let me assure you. Addiction is not your fault! You did not say or do anything that caused him to “shoot-up” or her to “snort a line”. You did not ruin your child.
Every one of us spends time beating ourselves up about our past mistakes, things we did not do as well as we would have wanted to from where we sit now, with the knowledge we possess … now! But let me ask you a question. Did you set out to ruin your child? Did you think to yourself “Ha, this will really mess her up for the rest of her life?” Of course not. As the typical parent, you did the best you could with the tools and knowledge you had at the time.
But also consider this. Are there things we would do differently if we could? Certainly! Every parent of every child ever born feels that way, not just the parents of children struggling with addiction. We don’t get a chance to go back and re-parent, and that child has moved on into the present. Living in the past does not help anyone. The only thing we can do now is to live today in today. We can learn from the past but only to change what we do today.
For a more detailed explanation, you will need to read the books where we dedicate several chapters to answering this question.
In “What Did I Do Wrong?”, we discovered that as long as you are the typical parent, you did not say or do anything that caused this addiction. If you did not cause it, you don’t own it, if you don’t own it, you can't fix it because it is not yours to fix. It is not your life. You are not the Free Moral Agent of his or her life, and only the Free Moral Agent can decide what to do with their own life.
That does not mean you are powerless, there are things you can do that can help to influence the decision that the Free Moral Agent makes. But the ultimate decision is still theirs to make.
For a more detailed explanation, you will need to read the books where we dedicate several chapters to answering this question.
When our children were small, they were dependent upon us. Our role was to protect them, provide for them. And so we got to make decisions for them. We chose how to dress them, who their friends were, when they went out, when they went to bed, and many other things.
As they grew, they moved into what we know of as counter-dependence. Our roles changed as well. Our job was to teach critical thinking and to help them understand the importance of being part of society, by learning to obey the rules at home they learn to function in society. Yet the roles of protecting them and providing for them were still important.
As they grew even more, they should have began the transition back to Intra-Dependence. Our roles would have changed to more counselor, advisor, mentor. The roles of protecting them and providing for them would have dwindled away to non-existent as they assumed adulthood.
When addiction became part of their lives, they became “stuck” someplace between counter-dependence and intra-dependence. Our roles in this stuck place is likewise some place between counselor/mentor/advisor and teaching the importance of making better decisions.
The way we do that is by letting them pay the consequences for the bad decisions they made which led them into this life of addiction.
For a more detailed explanation, you will need to read the books where we dedicate several chapters to answering this question.
No, you are hurting, you are in pain and suffering. If you hated your child you would not be here. What you hate is the drugs, the addicted lifestyle, the criminal behavior. Your child is not the addiction, and addiction is not your child.
Your actions, just being here, looking for answers proves you love your child. It is ok to hate the drugs, lying, stealing, abuse, the life style, and to love your child. We just need to separate the child from the lifestyle.
For a more detailed explanation, you will need to read the books where we dedicate several chapters to answering this question.
Yes, Yes they can. Society has probably told you that you are all alone, but you are not. Many many people have unfortunately parented children with addiction. It is estimated that 8 million adolescents, children between the ages of 12 and 18 years old, struggle with addiction in the United States alone, and they have parents. To put it into perspective there are only about 43 million adolescents total in the United States.
One of the things that many people overlook is that there are an estimated 26 million people that struggle with addiction in the United States alone, and most of them have parents. Even the homeless drug addict living on the street has parents. That is a combined 16% of all adolescents and adults people struggling with addiction in the US alone and each of them have people that love them. You are not alone.
For a more detailed explanation, you will need to read the books where we dedicate several chapters to answering this question.
Possibly, it depends. Many of the psychological games that our addicted loved ones need to play in order to support the addiction are designed to lead us into questioning our own reality. One of the best known of these games is “gaslighting”. It is not that our addicted loved ones are evil, just addicted, and addiction changes how they relate to other people, what they are willing to do to support the addiction.
The other thing that is likely happening is that your coping strategies are not able to cope with addiction. Coping strategies have been referred to as “those things you only develop after you needed them”, so it is very unlikely that you have coping strategies that can help you cope with an addicted child. I am willing to bet you have never been where you are in life today, before today.
When our coping strategies are not able to cope with our reality, it can make us feel out of control. Feeling out of control often makes us feel like we are going insane.
For a more detailed explanation, you will need to read the books where we dedicate several chapters to answering this question.
When we are fighting someone else’s addiction, it is only natural for us to give it all we have. After all we are in a life or death fight over someone we love. No price is to high, no sacrifice is too great. As parents when we see the train coming, our every instinct is to push him or her out of the way and take the hit for him or her.
It seems counter intuitive that taking care of our selves could actually be one of the best ways to help him or her. It simply does not make sense, right? But when we take care of ourselves, we have more resources, we can fight harder when we have more resources, we can think more strategically about which battles are worth the fight and which ones are not - we can pick our fights. We can recognize when it is time to get help, we can find the help we need. We can figure out if what we are doing is helping our child or helping the addiction. We can figure out how to give our addicted loved one more chances to make better choices and more incentive to make the correct choices.
For a more detailed explanation, you will need to read the books where we dedicate several chapters to answering this question.
People are funny, they are quick to label people, especially with shaming terms like Co-Dependent. Would it surprise you to learn that the so-called experts can't even agree how to spell it? Is it Co-Dependent, codependent, Codependent, or Codependent? Once we know that fact, is it really surprising that these same people can't come up with a standard definition for it or even a description of it? Co-Dependency is a completely imaginary way of looking at things, it is not real.
People are not born with the family of behaviors people associate with Co-Dependency. Co-Dependency is developed through a process in an effort to support the addiction.
A better way of asking the question might be by asking yourself 3 questions.
For a more detailed explanation, you will need to read the books where we dedicate several chapters to answering this question.
The disease model is one model, one way of looking at addiction. But it has a whole lot of problems. Not the least of which is that it is over 130 years old. Have we learned very much since the days of the horse drawn buggy, the telegraph, and cowboys? We now live in the modern world, the telegraph has been replaced with cellphones, satellite phones and alexa; the horse drawn buggy has been replaced with cars that are more sophisticated than the rockets we sent people to the moon in. Might we have learned a little bit more about addiction since then?
The truth is that there are several models to help us understand addiction. There is the disease model, the biological model, the psychological model, the sociological model, the spiritual model, and the holistic or bio/psycho/social/spiritual model. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses.
But in the end, a model is just a way of looking at something. The models for addiction just help us to make sense of addiction. They don’t tell us what addiction is.
For a more detailed explanation, you will need to read the books where we dedicate several chapters to answering this question.
Studies on the way that addiction affects the rest of the family equate the sadism and abuse experienced by being the family member of someone who is addicted, with living in a concentration camp. Other studies show that at least one family member will develop the signs and symptoms associated with PTSD. Studies on marriages suggest that between one in five (1:5) and one in three (1:3) marriages will not survive the addiction of a child.
Children are the ones most often studied and talked about, but spouses, siblings, parents, grand-parents are all directly affected. So parents, if we know how the others are affected we can figure out how to support them in this as well.
For a more detailed explanation, you will need to read the books where we dedicate several chapters to answering this question.
12-Step programs such as Celebrate Recovery and Al-Anon are good programs they have helped a lot of people and continue to help a lot of people. But I believe that they have some limitations. To understand this, we need to examine the historical context.
In the 1890s a group of New England pastors got together and developed a program known as the Oxford Program, you might be familiar with the Oxford Houses. Their program was based on the then new Medical or Disease Model and they developed 10 step program to help people struggling with addiction. A few decades later, Bill W. went through the program and found it to be helpful, but being an atheist struggled with the religious component. So he took their program, wrote God out of it and broke two (2) of the steps into additional steps ending up with the 12 step program. Eventually he wrote a “higher power” back into the program.
His wife looked at the program and decided that with some modifications it could be a good program for the wives of alcoholics to go through. So she incorporated the 12 steps into her program which is now known as Al-Anon.
Fast Forward to 1991 and we come to John Baker, who attended Saddleback Church where Rick Warren was the Pastor. John Baker liked AA well enough but wanted it to be more Christian, so he took the 12 steps and merged them with the 8 beatitudes of Jesus Christ’s teachings.
Do you see the problems?
Thanks to Choate’s research we now know that parents go through eight (8) significant themes and these themes are totally different than the 12 steps people struggling with addiction go through in those programs.
Some of these themes are (1) the process of confirming suspicions (2) struggling to set limits (3) dealing with the consequence of drug use on the entire family. etc. Velleman confirmed seven (7) different areas of family functioning that were impacted by addiction. These are markedly different than the 12 steps that those struggling with addiction go through.
I am not saying that Celebrate Recovery or Al-Anon type programs are ineffective; they are good programs that have helped and continue to help a lot of people. I am however saying that the focus of this work is completely different from their focus. I believe these books could be a great help as either a stand alone alternative or as complimentary material to Celebrate Recovery and Al-Anon type programs.
No, I am not a Psychologist, nor a Psychiatrist, nor am I a Licensed Christian Counselor. I also do not play any of these professions on TV.
I am a Chaplain with a Master’s of Divinity in Chaplaincy; I am an Ordained Pastor, who does Pastoral Counseling and has advanced training and certifications in counseling.
I have chosen to specialize in helping parents learn to “cope” with their new reality of having an addicted child. To that end, I have earned a Master's in Human Services Counseling – Addictions and recovery.
I have worked that specialized field in various formats, and I have developed a program that has proven to be helpful. But I make no claim of being a Mental Health provider, that is a separate field from what I do. Also you buying this book does not constitute a client-provider relationship, and you make your own decisions about what you will and will not implement in your life.
Look you know the intricate details of your life far more than any provider ever could, let alone an author from potentially thousands of miles away who has never met you. Therefore you make your decisions about what will work in your life and what wont.
That depends upon what you mean by the phrase “Religious Program”.
What is a religion?
If we say that a religion is a belief in a divine being, that excludes religions such as Buddhism.
If we say it is a belief in the supernatural, that excludes religions such as Hinduism (which believes in a spiritual reality inside the material world), but it also includes many who proclaim that they are non-religious.
So what is a religion? In the end a religion must have two components.
1. It must provide a master narrative, which answers three (3) questions:
For example Atheism provides a master narrative that goes something like this.
"We came from an accidental collision and bonding of the right elements at the right time, in the right sequence, in the right space. This life is all we have, when it is over we return to the dust, there is nothing after this. So the most important thing for us to do in this existence is to pursue our own self fulfilment."
That is a solid Master Narrative, it answers all three questions. Some people feel more comfortable calling the Master Narrative a “WorldView”. Most people will agree that everyone has a master narrative or a worldview.
Your master narrative or worldview informs your thoughts, opinions, perception, reactions, even the way you process events like the addiction of your child. In fact, your worldview or master narrative is so closely tied to who you are as a person that it would be impossible for you to speak at length on any topic and be expected to keep any influence of your worldview out of the discussion.
Some will point out that everyone has a master narrative or worldview, but not everyone has a religion. This is where the second element of what makes a religion comes in to play.
2. A religion must have at least some unprovable belief statements. In other words, to turn a master narrative or worldview into a religion, it must have some elements that have to be taken on faith.
Continuing with our example of atheism, none of the elements that make up the above described Master Narrative are provable.
No one has ever proven that we came from an accidental collision of elements.
No one has ever proven that there is no existence after this one.
We do not know that the most important things to spend our time doing revolve around self fulfillment.
The entire master narrative or worldview must be taken on faith.
I don’t want to single out atheism, we can do this with any belief system, any worldview – including secularism, agnosticism, humanism, Christianity, or any other worldview. All worldviews have a master narrative, and all master narratives are supported by unprovable belief statements. Each of our thoughts, opinions, and beliefs, are based on our own worldview; every worldview has unprovable parts that must be taken on faith. A worldview (or Master Narrative) supported by faith is, by definition, a religion.
It is common to say “I am Spiritual, not Religious”; No, as we have just shown since everyone has a worldview, and since all worldviews have to be taken on faith, we are all Religious, we may not all be Spiritual.
So now that we know that everyone is religious whether they personally like the term or not, I can answer the question.
Christianity informs my Master Narrative, my “Worldview” and my Worldview informs how I think about, process, and discuss these topics. So in that sense I guess you could call it a religious program. But if you are worried that I am going to hold you down, preach at you till your eyes roll back in your head, and then beat you with a Bible until they roll forward again, don’t be.
My intent is to meet you where you are, and where you are is trying to deal with an addicted loved one. I encourage you to look around this entire Author’s Site and determine for yourself if the influence of my Master Narrative is too overbearing. I think you will find the book to be of a similar tone; two dear friends quietly talking over some pretty serious crap while sitting at fire side sipping a pinot noir.
Here is where you are going to see the influence of my worldview in the book series.
I try to be respectful of everyone and their worldview/master-narrative/religion. But in a series such as this, I need to accommodate more than one group. Some might say even that little bit is too much “religion”, others might say it is not enough. But I think if we give each other the grace of admitting that we each have a worldview supported by our religion then we can give each other the grace of saying there is a world of difference between “I did not find that section particularly helpful”, and “No one would find that section helpful”. If we can give each other that grace, we can give ourselves the grace to work through our loved one’s addiction as we need to and at our own pace. No one is saying that your path begins at volume 1 chapter 1 and ends at volume III chapter 26, for many, even most it will, but not all.