If you are abusing drugs or alcohol, you may not realize that addiction affects your family as well as just yourself. Addiction is never an isolated problem. The harmful effects of addiction can stretch far and wide to many aspects of your life. Within families, it can lead to more tension and arguments. It can also lead to broken trust. Many family members experience feelings of guilt. And finally, addiction can have major financial effects as well. While it is unfortunate that addiction can affect your entire family, hopefully, your entire family can also support you if you’d like to quit.
How Addiction Affects Your Family: Never An Isolated Event
Heightened Tension
One major way that addiction affects your family is through tension and stress. Addiction is hard. It can lead to all kinds of uncomfortable situations that can result in stress. Your family may not understand your addiction. In addition, if it is a family member struggling they may act defensively if you bring it up. The negative effects of substance abuse can lead to many tense situations with your loved ones. In addition, drug and alcohol dependence can lead to irritability and mood swings, which can also increase tension.
Broken Trust
Another way that addiction affects your family is through broken trust. Addiction often involves secrecy and hiding. Oftentimes the person struggling with substances has to sneak around. Or they lie about their behavior so that they don’t get in trouble. All of this secrecy can lead to feelings of broken trust in a family. Children can develop trust issues if their parents struggle with addiction. Vice versa, parents might not trust their children if they’ve caught them sneaking drugs in the past.
Feelings of Guilt
Feelings of guilt are coming in families with addiction issues. Addiction affects your family whether you are the parent or child. Children often take on feelings of guilt whenever there is a stressful situation in their home life. And as parents, you wonder if there was something you did that caused your child to turn to drugs. These feelings of guilt are often unwarranted, but it’s hard to make them go away.
Financial Stress
Finally, addiction affects your family in financial ways as well. Drugs or alcohol become expensive quite quickly. This can lead to money problems in a short amount of time. If your family is unaware of your problem, they may not understand where the money is going and get suspicious. If they are aware of the problem, they probably will resent the amount of money spent on drugs or alcohol. All of this can cause stress on a family. It can lead to a financial crisis or a large amount of debt.
Your addiction affects your family, even if you don’t realize it. The mood swings related to addiction can lead to heightened tensions in your family unit. Sneaking around or acting secretive about drug or alcohol use can also lead to broken trust. Family members often take on feelings of guilt about a child or parent’s addiction. And finally, addiction can quickly lead to financial problems as substances are expensive. Unfortunately, all of these things can have a very negative effect on your family dynamic. But hopefully, your family will be willing to give you the support you need if you’d like to get clean.
