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How Substance Abuse Affects Family Relationships
It’s dark and runs deep, however, healing and recovery are always possible while we’re still here.
While I’ll speak generally here, firstly because the lessons I’ve learned from my near thirty-five years of experience are mainly universal, and not necessarily from within the confines of my own family, as some have been observed through other close relationships in my personal life — which is to say, they aren’t my stories to tell.
However, if I feel a lesson is beneficial to this community, I’ll share it — just in a respectful way. The last thing I’m out to do is hurt anyone’s feelings or speak out of turn. That being said, I have plenty of experience on the matter at hand, in many different facets and forms. While I may be nonspecific at times, understand it’s out of empathy, not shame or fear.
Real substance abuse problems, absolutely tear families apart, over entire lifetimes if families allow it to go unaddressed for that long. And many do. Many do because they don’t know what else to do, other than what they’ve always done. Be it drinking or a drug, if they are the user — or acting like they don’t know what the user is doing, every step of the way, if they are the loved one.
