How drinking influences Family Members in Families
Instructions: How drinking influences family members in families
- Negative effects of misusing alcohol.
- How drinking spoils relations in families.
- What happens when someone in the family suffers from alcoholism.
- Who all get affected in the family if a family member is dealing with alcoholism.
- How to get help to cure a family member.
Solution
How drinking influences Family Members in Families
The excessive consumption of alcohol may have negative implications for an individual at a personal level, their environment, and the entire society. As such, those who abuse alcohol are not only harming themselves, but also those around them through various outcomes such as violence and accidents.
One of the major negative implications of alcoholism is that it leads to dysfunctionality of a family. An alcoholic is likely to lose their ability to actively perform their duties as a partner, a parent, or a member of a household. Drinking related violence and accidents at home may cause devastating effects and leave a mark in the lives of children. In addition, due to the actions of the alcoholic within the household, the rest of the family members may develop mental disorders such as fear, anxiety, and depression. For pregnant women who drink, they expose their unborn child to a high risk of developing Fetal Alcoholic Spectrum Disorders (FASD).
When a member of the family drinks, not only do they expose the members of their households to such psychological problems, but they also expose them to increased chances of poverty due to high amounts of money being spent on alcohol, legal and medical expenses, lost opportunities for employment, reduced wages, and reduced loan eligibility. Alcohol abuse is also a major contributor to partner violence. Case in point, most abusive husbands tend to be alcoholic.
Alcoholism can also affect workplace relations and performance in various ways. One such way involves the increase in absences due to sick leave as a result of alcohol related injuries. In addition, alcoholics are more likely to cause workplace accidents, some of which may be fatal. The level of productivity of an individual may be lowered as a result of drinking at the workplace, as alcohol impairs proper coordination of functions. It may also lead to destroyed relationships with colleagues due to abuses and inappropriate conduct. To the extreme, individuals may lose their jobs and become unemployed due to heavy drinking.
It is the role of the family to overcome the emotions that come in response to an alcoholic member of the family and to embark on measures that would remove such an individual from dependency on the drink. This can only be effectively achieved through seeking help, in form of therapy, from a professional.
Such therapy will allow the therapists to engage the entire family in the healing process and to ensure that they remain knit into one unit considering the fact that they need to support each other in the healing process. Other measures that could be explored include joining online support forums or live support meetings as these involve open discussions among individuals and families that have suffered the same and measures that they have employed to effect healing.
On the part of the alcoholic, there are various initiatives that they may embrace to facilitate their change in behavior. Ione such approach is seeking help in form of peer support, support groups, or rehabilitation centers. Another approach that could be embraced by such an individual is to educate oneself in issues of alcoholism so as to understand the various implications of such behavior on one’s health as well as the economic and social welfare of one’s loved ones.
Some of the books that may be used by both the alcohol dependent person and the family of such an individual to guide their road to recovery include: Alcoholic Iliad/Recovery Odyssey: Utilizing Myth as Addiction Metaphors in Family Therapy, by Jeff Sandoz; Integral Recovery: A Revolutionary Approach to the Treatment of Alcoholism and Addiction, by John Dupuy; and Arresting Destruction: Recovery from Alcoholism, by Martin Noel-Buxton.