When seeking a drug rehab center, you will find many places that offer to family members support for their problem of having a drug addict in their family. The inference is that family structure is both sound and supportive, that the family member who uses drugs is the one out of step, out of order.
In some cases, a family member has issues of his own, that lead him into drug addiction, which do not concern or relate to his family. However, it has often been found that the negative attitudes and feelings that lead to drug use are the result of poor family dynamics, and dysfunctional family habits.
The younger a person needs help, the more reliant he will be on the support of his family. The younger a drug addict is, the more likely it is that dysfunctional family behavior has caused or contributed to the problem of his drug addiction.
One of the situations in which drug rehab center fails, and drug addicts go back to using, is when drug treatment plans place reliance on the family structure, yet fail to assess the ability of family members to provide genuine help and support.
Helping by way of intervention, with the support of family members, is always a good move in principle. However, if the drug addict is not given an opportunity to discuss any problems that he has with members of the family, and is made to shoulder all the blame, this will impede, rather than assist the process of trying to give the drug addict help.
When a drug addict seeks help, it can be seen by family members as an ideal opportunity to look at and review the dynamics of the whole family. The family can look at the issue as “a family that has got drug addiction in it”, rather than isolating the drug addict, and seeing them as being the family problem.
Any family that has got drug addiction in it needs to stop and rethink their ways and discover possible reasons why drug abuse problems might be occurring in one of the family members.
However, what most often happens in fact is that the offending drug addict gets medicated, and returned to his family, to do the best that he can. Sometimes drug rehab facilities needs to take a stance, and remove the drug addict from family influence, while he tries to sort his life out.
Once recovered from drug addiction, restored to confidence and good health, with more healthy patterns of relationship in place, a drug addict will then be in a better position to take on the family, and resolve dysfunctional issues.
Good drug rehab places the interests of the addict before those of anyone else. The drug addict needs to be free to consider all of his relationships and values. When close family relationships are dysfunctional this might place him in conflict with the family system.
Achieving full recovery from drug addiction means being able to assess all of a person’s relationships – and get rid of those that are toxic and harmful, relationships that cause stress.
Author: National Addiction Resources
America's Best Treatment Directory
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