Substance is not only a family disease but it is transgenerational

Claudia Black in her book, "It Will Never Happen To Me", writes, "While children of alcoholics are at high risk to become alcoholic, research demonstrates children of alcoholics are often prone to marry those who are, or become, alcoholic. In addition, my own research demonstrates that should a child of an alcoholic neither beocme alcoholic, nor marry an alcoholic, emotional and/or psychological patterns develop which may cause problems for this person in adulthood." p.xv

I have seen people who marry three times all to alcoholic partners. It is an uncanny phenomenon that most marriage and family counselors with 10 years or more of experience have witnessed.

The explanation, of course, is that the ACOA has learned habitual patterns of behavior as a child growing up and the person tends to continue to look for people unconsciously with whom they can participate in these familiar patterns.

The psychological legacy unconsciously transmitted to children from their family of origin is made up of the values, opinions, beliefs, and practices which they participated in and absorbed like little sponges. It is not until a person gets older do they begin to question whether they want to raise their children the same way they were raised or do it different. Murry Bowen, a psychiatrist who pioneered in family therapy, called it differentiation, meaning the degree to which a person becomes consciously aware of his/her psychological legacy and makes a conscious choice about what values, opinions, beliefs, and practices the person wants to continue and the ones the person wants to change. It is this conscious choice that Bowen believed contributed to a person's mental health. The more conscious one is of one's psychological legacy and the degree to which a person takes a stand on the values, beliefs, opinions, and practices, the person wants to live their life by, the more differentiated they will be and the more mentally healthy.

Claudia Black's point that children of alcoholics seem to continue with the dysfunctional values, opinions, beliefs, and practices of their family of origin has been demonstrated repeatedly. At GCASA about 60% of the admissions to GCASA's treatment programs report that they grew up in alcohol and drug abusing families.

The disease of substance abuse is clearly a transgenerational phenonmenon and unless the whole family gets treatment, it is more likely that the disease will be transmitted to successive generations.

Alcoholism the family disease: It will never happen to me

I went into the Lift Bridge bookstore this afternoon, Sunday, April 19th, 2009, and there on the shelf is the 1981 book entitled "It Will Never Happen To Me" by Claudia Black which is a classic and pioneering book on Children Of Alcoholics. For $6.99 it is quite a bargain and so I bought it and decided to re-read it since I am rejuvenating my interest in Addiction as a family disease.

I recommend the book to you and if you have a copy or will buy a copy we can discuss it here on the GCASA Cares blog. I will be tagging these posts, Claudia Black, and I will post a series of reflections on her writing in this book. I hope that you will join in the conversation.

Claudia writes in the introduction: "Only 3 to 5 percent of the alcoholic people in the U.S, are represented by the stereotyped Skid Row drinker. The so-called average alcoholic is a man or woman with family, job, and responsibilities."

Dr. Black already pointed out that one out or six families in the United States is affected by alcoholism and I think this is a very conservative estimate.

GCASA's data from Genesee and Orleans counties finds that about 30% of 12th graders report that they have binge drank (5 drinks or more on a single occasion) in the last 2 weeks. My question has always been where are these kids getting this kind of alcohol and where are they drinking it. The answer which research has found is at home.

Alcoholism is a family disease and in 60% of people in treatment at GCASA say that they come from families where alcohol was a problem as they were growing up.

Most of GCASA's prevention programs focus on young people, but I am increasingly convinced that the young people would not be manifesting anywhere near the dysfunctional symptoms they are were it not for the problems in their families.

Drinking is glamorized in our culture and is constantly advertised to us as the way to enjoy life. It doesn't take much intelligence to deconstruct these ads and see the perverse messages they send to adults and young people that the way to enjoy the good life is to drink. Parents rarely object to these insidious messages while they are quickly outraged by sexual and violent material.

As the title of Claudia Black's title suggests, those of us who are somewhat aware of these pernicious and damaging cultural memes, we reasure ourselves that "It will never happen to me" and all to often find ourselves caught up in addiction either ourselves or marrying someone who becomes addicted or has a family history of the disease.

The most recent Budweiser ad campaign promises that its beer has "drinkability". Can you tell me what that is? What is that to your children? How many of these commercials have they seen. Have you discussed what "drinkability" means to them?