Individuals become addicted in one of two ways. First, being born with the DRD2 gene where any use immediately starts the cascade of addiction. The second way into addiction is using drugs or alcohol as a primary strategy to adapt to their environment. The first is immediate; the second is gradual.
Either way, the impact from addiction has 3 main stakeholders: the individual, the family and the community. Impact starts with the individual, moves into the family, and gradually the community. Presently, our standard of care solutions follow this same trajectory.
Individual —> Family —> Community
In an ideal world, when the individual is healed, so is the family and the community. But this thinking is incomplete. We know because our statistics are not improving.
This article starts by examining the traditional thinking of each stakeholder. Then the trajectory is reversed. A confidential, structured, online family community impacts the structure of families, which once implemented, creates conditions in the family that are inhospitable to active addiction. The individual feels the impact.
Communities —> Families —> Individuals
We need both. We need “both/and” thinking to improve statistics. We need solutions for the individual, which are reflected in our traditional system of care. We also need solutions that provide safe opportunities for whole family healing, opportunities for families to opt in when they are ready. We need solutions that accelerate individual therapy and treatment. We need solutions where families can educate themselves, at their pace build trust with likeminded people who they can talk with confidentially. Families are the stakeholder with the greatest potential for becoming a strong part of the solution.
The Individual
For the individual with the DRD2 gene, any use results in an immediate cascade of addiction. Think the Jekyll and Hyde scenario. For the rest of us, addiction starts as a solution to a problem, an individual problem, a family problem or a problem in their culture or community. Early on, the “solution” is not addiction and often culturally accepted. Over time the “solution” becomes meaningful to an individual and alters how they make decisions. They will gravitate to environments that reinforce this meaning – relationships that reinforce their “solution.” The “solution” may be shared with some and kept secret from others. Mixed messages manifest as internal conflict and/or conflict in relationships that do not reinforce the “solution.” Problems that occur are managed by the “solution.” The individual’s problem solving abilities decline. Small problems get bigger. The individual’s connection to the “solution” is more meaningful than their connection to people in their life that use to be meaningful.
The Family
The family is often the first impacted by the “solution” the individual has found meaningful. Whether their loved one’s “solution” is obvious to the family or not, their “solution” does impact all relationship in the family. While the individual is getting more meaning from using, the meaning in their connection with themselves and others who do not support the “solution” goes down. For the family watching their loved one’s decline. their concern naturally increases.
Just like the meaning-making process of their loved one is myopically focused on the substance or process, the meaning-making of the family becomes narrowly focused on their loved one. The way in which love, caring, and connection between family members was expressed goes through changes. It’s a natural reaction for families to be concerned, but there are obstacles in the family.
- The family environment becomes stressful and chaotic. Ways in which the family had connected previously go through structural change. (the way the family operates or functions: communication, coping roles, unspoken family rules, etc).
- The collective nervous system of the family incrementally increases and coping roles are created in attempts to stay connected as a family, manage what’s going on around them, the impact to their body, and find a solution. The coping roles orient around the individual in an attempt to stay connected as a family.
- The way in which concern, caring and love for the individual is expressed through these coping roles. Underneath the coping roles are unexpressed feelings. One person in the family may feel all these feelings and become symptomatic, which creates another problem for the family to orient around.
- 4 Historically, families were blamed and seen as part of the problem. This history is responsible for the stigma and shame that has trickled down through generations and still exists today. But families feel responsible. They are reluctant of advice from professionals. They suffer in silence.
The Community
The community feels an impact from addiction. Substances or processes that an individual can become addicted to have a good return on investment for shareholders. However, people with addiction are less productive in the community and require more services from the community. Hospitals, police, detox, mental health, and treatment services have a significant financial impact from individuals with addiction. It is pretty obvious that the system of care focuses on the individual. There are few services for families. Services that exist in the community create ease for inherent obstacles for families.
- Confidentiality: For services in the community, family members must break through their own feelings of shame or cultural stigma of addiction in the family. To utilize services in the community, family members must be seen and risk what others might think of them.
- Confusion: There’s a lot of information on the internet, but it’s often confusing. One reason it is confusing is because of the historic trickle down of confusing cultural messages.
- Solution(s): Families want to educate themselves and choose a solution in which they align and feel empowered. Some solutions profess there is one way for the individual and one way for the family to heal from the ramifications of addiction, while others solutions acknowledge there are multiple pathways. The different solutions require time for the family to educate themselves and time to make a unified decision, but often they make a decision at a time of chaos when they just want the problem to go away.
- Activation: Generally, families try their best to deal with this problem alone and reach out only when they accept that the strategies they have been using are not working. Often, acceptance doesn’t come until major crisis when their nervous system is highly activated, there is less blood flow to the part of the brain that can make the best decision for their situation.
Traditional thinking provides a solution for the individual. Remove the problem for the family. Lessen the impact to the community. This idealistic approach yields the outcomes we presently have.
National averages
SAMHSA reported that in 2014, an estimated 22.5 million Americans aged 12 and older self-reported needing treatment for alcohol or illicit drug use, and 11.8 million adults self-reported needing mental health treatment or counseling in the past year. These disorders are among the top conditions that cause disability and carry a high burden of disease in the United States, resulting in significant costs to families, employers, and publicly funded health systems. By 2020, mental and substance use disorders will surpass all physical diseases as a major cause of disability worldwide. https://www.samhsa.gov/prevention
The impact to the infrastructure of our communities is staggering. So many people are working diligently on the frontline of the addiction crisis. But the statistics are not improving. Actually, in some areas, deaths from addiction are getting worse. Imagine how many families are negatively impacted by addiction before death. We know there is a lot.
Through the thinking process of the trajectory of impact: individuals, families, and communities it would seem that to fix the addiction problem, we fix the individual.
We can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it. – Albert Einstein
Let’s flip the trajectory of impact around to the trajectory of healing
Communities —> Families —> Individuals
Healthy communities positively impacting families. This impact reorients the family to what is most important to them, and their unique expression of family. This reorienting of family structure trickles down and impacts individuals still using, ambivalent, or new to recovery.
Imagine the contribution of the ideal community
Picture a community that creates conditions and empowers each family member to look at their family situation through a new lens and recognize a new perspective. With ongoing connection to the community, their new perspective, and their individual and family strengths, over time they realize their own best next steps that address their specific situation. Eventually, they connect to a positive vision that they want to create in the future. For some, the ideal may be too much to imagine. Let’s look at reality.
Empower yourself with real statistics from your community
Contact your public health department and learn the statistics about substance abuse in your county. Shift your thinking inwards from the overall county to identify groups and activities in the community that your loved one frequents. Turn your attention to yourself and think about groups and activities you and other family members frequent. Those groups and activities either contribute to the potential for drug use, or they are protective factors that are a piece of creating conditions that minimize drug use.
Recognize which factors contribute to your ideal
Compare the ideal community to the statistics in the community you live in, and your family situation. What do you want for your family? If you’re like many folks, when you think about your ideal family situation often the first thought is, “I just want my loved one to stop using. This would solve the problem.” But this thinking contributes to higher risk over time. Stopping drug use alone, without changing the activities and groups frequented, has not stopped drug use.
Realize families can lead the change process and/or align with it
Imagine an online family community for anyone who cares about addiction recovery. Now, families who see warning signs have a safe, online forum to where they can get info before it’s a crisis. Families can attend and participate in two community chats each week, communicate one-to-one with others in the community, explore family specific resources and use this information to make the best decisions for them. And, they can remain anonymous.
Addiction is an opportunity for everyone to reevaluate and expand their potential
Our best opportunity to transform is by forging community with people who have been there – walked in our shoes – and people who are going through what we’re going through, right now. People willing to share perspectives, connect, work together, help and be helped. Regardless of the intellectual understanding here, this still may be too scary for some. Perhaps, too much, too soon. Okay. We get it. We’ve come up with a signup process that is potentially confidential and provides an opportunity to gradually build trust with the community, at your pace.
The both/and approach to getting a loved one in early addiction to reach out for help:
- Stay connected with your loved one. Become curious about your end of the connection.
- Signup for the online family recovery community, and engage with the resources, new thinking, and community at your own pace. Share with others in your family.
- Aim to create conditions in your family that are inhospitable to active addiction.
- Make adjustments in your thinking and connection with your loved one. Become curious about your own challenge with change and the impact to your loved one.
- Talk about these changes in the online family recovery community chats, ask for an accountability buddy, stay connected with likeminded people.
- If/when you are curious about outside intervention, request we use a community chat to explore different intervention models and resources.
- You and/or your family assess the conditions in your family and your loved one’s behavior.
Imagine individuals in a family building trust and learning skills at their own pace
The community tools of trust building, communication guidelines and boundaries are used to engage with other community members. The same skills practiced in the community can be implemented in families to create conditions that are inhospitable to active addiction. Any individual in the family can signup and start initiating movement towards health for their whole family. The username and password can be shared with others in the family when appropriate.
The community views addiction in the family as a structural problem with structural solutions. Underneath addiction, the family is or has untapped potential to express their wholeness and competence. Conditions are created in the community that encourages this untapped potential to arise.
The Families
The practice of tools in the online community impacts family members’ interactions day to day. The structure of the family begins to change – relationships, rules, roles, and how/when communication happens. Visually, the change might look like a family moving from some variation of the Spotlight Diagram to some variation of the Matrix of Health. This structural shift is important because the spotlight diagram creates a hospitable environment for addiction and the matrix of health creates an environment inhospitable to active addiction.
Human Transformation occurs in the context of human relationships. Think back to every important transformative experience in your life – good and bad. I’m guessing you’ll find that it happened in a social context. Even those experiences that seem, on the surface, personal and individual are almost always connected to people. To transform we need other people. Family. Friends. Community. The community provides each member with the opportunity to: learn together, grow together, work together and act together.
The Individual
Whether the individual is still using or in early recovery they will feel the impact from their family’s change. It sends a strong message to the individual when they see that their family is taking responsibility for their own behavior. Regardless, if the individual is still using or not their brain has been impaired. Healing takes time. Change in the nervous system, new behavior, new thinking creates a new environment. Everyone contributes; everyone benefits. Ideally, the individual is engaged with groups and others who support their own recovery.
Community as a complement to therapy and all addiction treatment services
Change starts by learning new info. Some families have the good fortune to gather helpful concepts from a group or a family program. But new info does not lead to change without continual reminders and support for the desired new behavior Old habits are fueled by the family’s collective nervous system, which has been highly charged from addiction’s chaotic environment. We know that just removing the addiction does provide a respite, but does not automatically remove family member’s highly charged nervous systems, worry and automatic reactions. Implementing skills of calming one’s nervous system creates more blood flow to the prefrontal cortex where it will be easier to make a good decision and respond well to the next situation. The connection with likeminded people, accountability (if they choose it), community chats, and structure of the online community supports the change process, which supports the family creating conditions that are inhospitable to active addiction.
An individual or family can start this process while their loved one is at any stage of addiction or recovery. Skills you learn and practice in the community are integrated into your family at your own pace.