By Andrew Malekoff©
Despite
feeling blindsided, many of us now know that we are living in the midst of an
unprecedented drug epidemic. According to the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, since 1999, the rate of overdose deaths including prescription
pain relievers, heroin and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, nearly
quadrupled.
In
the intervening years, many steps have been taken to help save lives. These
include improving prescribing practices and expanding access to
medication-assisted treatment and the use of Naloxone.
Medication-assisted
treatment combines behavioral therapy and medications such as methadone or
buprenorphine to treat opioid addiction. Through affordable, accessible and
quality care people can recover and go on to live productive lives.
Naloxone
is used to treat a narcotic overdose in an emergency situation by reversing the
effects of opioids, including slowed breathing or loss of consciousness.
Notwithstanding
the increased attention to lifesaving measures, there is relatively little
focus on the devastating impact of addiction on children living in families
where a parent is addicted to drugs or alcohol.
There
are more than 8 million children under 18 years of age that are growing up in
homes with alcohol and other drug-abusing parents. These young people are
likely to become alcohol or drug abusers themselves without intervention.
Parental
alcoholism and drug addiction influence the use of alcohol and other drugs in
several ways. These include increased stress and decreased parental monitoring
that contributes to adolescents’ joining peer groups that support drug use.
Children who grow up with an addicted parent learn
to distrust to survive. When
unpredictability dominates one’s life, he or she is likely to be wary, always
sensing disappointment lurking nearby.
Children growing up with an addicted parent become
uncomfortably accustomed to living with chaos, uncertainty and
unpredictability. When a child grows up
under these conditions, they learn to guess at what normal is.
Denial, secrecy, embarrassment and shame are common
experiences of children who live with an addicted parent. Even seeking help outside of the family might in
itself be seen as an act of betrayal, a step toward revealing the family
secret. The stigma of addiction can leave chemically dependent persons and
family members feeling utterly alone in the world.
Children who grow up with an addicted parent live
with the unspoken mandate - don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel.
Growing up with an addicted family member leaves
children with little hope that things will ever change. I am reminded of a parable about the small village on
the edge of a river.
One
day a villager saw a baby floating down the river. He jumped in the river and
saved the baby.
The next day he saw two babies floating down the river. He and
another villager dived in and saved them. Each day that followed, more babies
were found floating down the river. The villagers organized themselves,
training teams of swimmers to rescue the babies. They were soon working around
the clock.
Although
they could not save all the babies, the rescue squad members felt good and were
lauded for saving as many babies as they could. However, one day, one of the
villagers asked: "Where are all these babies coming from? Why don't we organize
a team to head upstream to find out who's throwing the babies into the river in
the first place!"
Mobilizing
resources to pull babies from the river, while neglecting the ones left behind
makes no sense.
Published in Behavioral Health News, FALL (2) 2017
Issue, Volume 5, Number 2, p. 20
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