Alcohol Awareness Week – Families and Addiction
Alcohol in the family
This week is Alcohol Awareness Week, with a focus on Alcohol and Families. We have picked a theme for each day to share facts and information about the impact and harm alcohol can have on relationships and families.
Families and Addiction
Most of the time our focus is on the individual who presents with an alcohol addiction. But what about the rest of the family?
Family members who have a loved one struggling with harmful drinking also need and deserve help and support. Harmful drinking can impact on a family’s finances, physical health, psychological wellbeing and can cause parenting difficulties. Each family is different and so each situation is unique but the impact of addiction on families is often devastating, with very few exceptions.
Children become aware of parental drinking from an early age and those with parental alcohol misuse are:
- Twice as likely to experience difficulties at school
- Three times more likely to consider suicide
- Four times more likely to become dependent drinkers themselves
- Five times more likely to develop an eating disorder
These risks are reduced when the family receive high levels of family support, where there is a non-drinking parent who can reduce the negative impact of the drinking parent, and where there is security in other areas of their lives, for example, a regular household income.
Tomorrow, we’ll look at one of our programmes, CRAFT – Community Reinforcement and Family Training, which is designed to give anyone supporting a family member who drinks harmfully or uses drugs tools and strategies to achieve change for themselves and their loved one.
If you or someone you care about is concerned about their alcohol or drug use, contact one of our services to get help and advice today.
