13. Family's mental health is challenged by addicted loved ones

By Tom O'Connell

"I think I'm going crazy" is a common response from spouses of alcoholics who have tried everything they can to resolve the addictive illness of a partner. To enhance understanding of this reality, this essay on "the family illness" will focus on insights gathered from an interview I did years ago with Margee Kunhardt, assistant director of Family Services for Beech Hill Hospital in Dublin, New Hampshire.

"Typically, a husband believes there is something he can do to control his wife's drinking," she explained. "But attempting to control someone else's drinking leads only to increased confusion and exhaustion." 

She said the first goal at Family Services was to try to help family members of chemically dependent people to understand that chemical dependency is a disease process that is chronic and progressive. "We suggest that they redirect their love and energy into more constructive ways."

This includes learning about chemical dependency and how to reduce the impact of the disease on themselves. "Sharing their feelings with us and each other helps them to see that they are not alone and there is hope," she said.

A typical wife with an alcoholic husband is likely to say, "Nothing works, and I'm confused and afraid. If I didn't love him, it wouldn't hurt so much. There's no one I can talk to. My family doesn't understand. Besides, I don't want them to know what's been going on."

However, pleas to the drinker to reduce consumption are ignored. Promises are  broken. Family life is shattered. And the drinker keeps on drinking. "It is extremely difficult for a wife to believe that she can't do something to change her husband," said Kunhardt. "But we point out that even though families can't make people change, a changed family attitude can have a positive effect on the chemically dependent person."

Kunhardt reported that "the chances of an alcoholic becoming sober and staying sober are greatly increased when family members take responsibility to get help themselves. It is very important for families to realize that they don't have to wait for the alcoholic to want help in order to seek help for themselves."

Such help may include counseling or group therapy at an addiction treatment center such as Beech Hill Hospital, and joining a 12 Step group such as Al-Anon. This group is dedicated to providing loved ones of alcoholics with a way to share their experience and learn more effective ways to cope with their problems.

As loved ones of addicts recover they own mental health they begin to realize that preoccupation with the addict's behavior has been causing themselves much pain, whether the addict is drinking or not.

People also learn the lesson that they cannot control the alcoholic's drinking no matter what. So they learn to give up that exercise in futility, take the focus off the alcoholic, and use their own energy in more constructive ways.

An important lesson they learn is to stop enabling the alcoholic to escape the natural consequences of excessive drinking. By protecting the alcoholic they are feeding into the impaired person's denial system. Instead, loved ones have to learn to let the alcoholic feel the pain. And this is not cruelty or indifference since pain is a motivating factor for change.

Margee Kunhardt explained that alcoholism in the family, with appropriate help, is the most treatable of all major illnesses. But trying to deal with it alone leads to unhealthy obsession, worry, fear, guilt, anger, fatigue, physical ailments, and deep loneliness.

By going to Al-Anon, people get a better perspective on their own lives, and become healthier themselves. Then, whether or not the alcoholic chooses recovery, the mental and even physical health of the family unit improves.

Through Al-Anon and other counseling, people's lives become more manageable, and life becomes more than mere existence. Also, the positive effect on the family can help motivate the alcoholic to seek help and enter recovery.

To sum up, Kunhardt said the following three steps were critical:

1) Admit there is a problem and that you cannot cope with it alone. "Who can?"

2) Have hope. "There is help and hope."

3) Do it! Take the help! "Will you feel any differently if you  keep doing what you have been doing?"

To find out more about Al-Anon, check your local phone directory and make the call. What have you got to lose except your alienation, your confusion, your exhaustion, and your feeling that maybe you are going crazy?

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