Adult children of alcoholics

The New York state Assembly has passed a bill that would make it a felony offense to drive while intoxicated if children under age 16 are in the vehicle, the New York Times reported Nov. 18.

From The Sun Sentinel

Dallas Adkins Jr., the Kings Point resident whom deputies shot last week after he pointed a rifle at them, is an Air Force veteran who struggled since he returned from Vietnam, his mother said Friday.

...He struggled with post-traumatic stress and alcoholism, and moved to Florida to get his life together, they said.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and alcoholism go together all too frequently. Today, with soldiers coming home from two wars, these problems threaten to be worse than ever. Help is out there for families. In Rochester, we are lucky enough to have the Veterans Outreach Center (VOC).

But resources are never sufficient and more and more soldiers are returning from the war to fight their own battles.

Families in Recovery is dedicated to working with veterans in the Rochester region on their family alcoholism issues. We will be partnering with the VOC, hopefully in the coming year, to start offering services both for veterans and for their families.

We send soldiers off to fight our wars, to keep us safe. It is time we all returned the favor.

Additional research has come out showing again that any alcohol advertising, regardless of the intended audience, leads more kids to drink. From an article in biomedcentral.com (link goes to a press release)

Alcohol advertising and marketing may lead to underage drinking. A large systematic review of more than 13,000 people, published in the open access journal BMC Public Health, suggests that exposure to ads and product placements, even those supposedly not directed at young people, leads to increased alcohol consumption.

The authors recommend that counter-advertising, social marketing techniques and other prevention options such as parenting programmes, price increases and limiting availability may be useful to limit alcohol problems in young people.

I would say that there are two elements minimum that are required to have a meaningful long-term impact on this issue.

First, parents and other family members need to be aware that any exposure to alcohol normalizes consumption, an issue particularly felt in alcoholic homes where consumption is constant. When kids see beer t-shirts on dad or Absolute ads in mom’s magazine, this makes it easier and easier for kids to pick up a bottle themselves far earlier than they otherwise would have.

And second, kids need to hear the counter-message. Alcohol is at the heart of many of society’s major problems. From domestic violence to coronary disease to depression, there are few domains where alcohol’s presence is not felt. Especially in younger, developing minds and bodies, the risks of drinking far outweigh any temporary idea of fun. Alcohol leads to half of all sexual assaults, huge increases in serious physical assault and violence, and 40% of all traffic fatalities. And the list goes on and on.

Kids need to hear the counter-message, but again in alcoholic homes, any real discussion of the counter-message is typically missing. Heck, these are the kids who are witnessing the counter-message first hand. They see the extremes of the pain alcohol abuse and dependence can cause. And the result for these kids – they are at least 4 times more likely than the rest of the population to abuse and become dependent on alcohol themselves.

A huge, community-wide marketing campaign seems like an appealing response. But I would want to do a bit more research first. Some studies have shown that any exposure to alcohol normalizes it – even campaigns meant to counter the problem. So who do we target – the kids or the parents? And do we try and scare people – think of the ‘brain on drugs’ ads? Or do we merely try and teach them? Or do we offer alternative messages, affirming ones, that take the focus off the problems and put it on the solutions instead. I am leaning towards the final option.

From evliving.com

Dear Amy: Recently, my mother passed away and ever since then my father has been overly critical of everything I do. This is not a new phenomenon, but rather this is something that has been happening ever since I was fourteen. I was a good student in school, rarely gave anyone a problem, and silently put up with disrespect and hurtful comments from other family members all the while seething underneath.

The following comes courtesy of Council On Alcoholism and Addiction of the Finger Lakes

Mothers who exhibit positive thoughts regarding their children's future alcohol use may help teens avoid drinking -- but mothers' negative thinking could have the opposite result. That's according to a new Iowa State University study. Said lead author Stephanie Madon, an ISU associate professor of psychology, "When mothers overestimated their teens' future use of alcohol, the teens developed the self-view that they were likely to drink alcohol in the future, which ultimately led them to drink more." The study was recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

This research is particularly relevant to children from alcoholic families.

The following is excerpted from an interview with John McCain:

I became aware, I think when I was either in my very earliest teens or even before that, that my father had a struggle with alcohol. And I watched him fight and fight this sickness.

This entry is the resumption of the family alcoholism blog. As the president and founder of Families in Recovery, I've been around these issues long enough to have something to say now and then. This blog is the place to do it. The opinions and information here are not representative of Families in Recovery and are mine alone.

So now, on to the blog...

The list of actors and celebrities whose early life was shaped by alcoholism is long. Add Julie Andrews to the list. In her recent memoir, Home A Memoir of My Early Years, Julie Andrews discusses her early life without overly sentimentalizing it.

There is an interesting explanation to a COA writing to get help from a columnist at the Daily Observer in Ontario, CA

Dear Sam: My dad is an alcoholic. No amount of pleading stops him from drinking.
Even when he is sober he acts in the same confusing, manipulative way. What's with addicts that make them so messed up?

Abstinence from alcohol and drugs is just the starting point in defining "recovery" for people with substance abuse disorders, according to a paper in the October issue of the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment (JSAT).

According to an initial definition developed by a panel of experts from the Betty Ford Institute, recovery is "a voluntarily maintained lifestyle characterized by sobriety, personal health, and citizenship." The panel's report appears as part of a special section of JSAT devoted to Defining and Measuring Recovery.