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Dear
Dr. Bill,
My husband and I have been having a rough time with
our marriage....lots of arguments, usually when he's
had too much to drink. His own father was an alcoholic
who made his mother miserable. I think we need some
counseling but he's against it saying it would be "hanging
out our dirty linen." Now, even our 14 year old
son is getting into the act. Several times this summer
he has come in late for curfew, smelling of alcohol
and tobacco. Do you think our problems are causing him
to behave like this?
Troubled-Teaneck
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Dear
Troubled,
Without a more complete family history and a careful
evaluation of your son's alcohol use, I would hesitate
to finger any single cause for his changing behavior.
But, the fact remains, that alcoholism is a disease
process which I have seen repeatedly passed down from
generation to generation. So many substance abusing
kids are victims of parents who didn't provide them
with a fair chance in life.
Some
of the kids that we have treated come from good home
environments where the teen has simply gotten involved
with the wrong crowd and moved into a drug oriented
lifestyle. Intervention and treatment with this group
is more likely to be successful because the home situation
is likely to be stable and supportive during the difficult
process of recovery. A smaller group of teenagers seen
by us have had emotional, behavioral problems which
predated their drug use. Use of drugs by these youngsters
is simply a way to medicate themselves in order to feel
normal. Treatment is difficult and often prolonged.
However, most of the adolescents that we have treated
over the last 18 years have been victims of troubled
parents, like yourselves, who are so immersed in their
own problems that they have little time or energy to
deal with their children. These kids often receive careless,
inconsistent, neglectful and even abusive parenting
with consequent repeated damage to the development of
a healthy self-esteem. In my experience, adolescent
chemical dependency is often a process that begins long
before the child takes the first drug (most commonly
alcohol and/or marijuana).
When
we are young, we are who our parents say we are. As
a weapon, a parent's tongue can be as vicious as a fist...an
all too frequent occurrence when the parent has been
drinking. When a child receives constant disapproval,
anger, blame and criticism from a parent, invariably
feelings of worthlessness, of "being no good"
will result. In todays drug-taking world, these victimized
children soon learn that they can medicate these painful
feelings. With alcoholism in the family, this becomes
a sure road to addiction unless some action is taken
to intervene in the process.
Ineffective
parents are probably behaving the way their parents
behaved, making the same mistakes...and nothing changes.
I suspect that your husband was raised in such a home....he
probably doesn't know what a "normal" family
life is. In all likelihood, his problem has affected
your son.
Yours
is a family in trouble. But, take heart.... alcohol
and other drug addictions are treatable diseases. I
suggest that you seek from an addiction specialist trained
in family therapy as soon as possible for yourself as
well as your husband and son as, invariably, the pathology
extends beyond the addicted individual affecting all
other family members.
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