Growing Up With an Alcoholic

Alcoholism causes a great deal of pain and suffering to people who are living with it. It also has collateral damage, negatively impacting the people who live around alcoholics. Growing up as with an alcoholic can be a particularly difficult experience, with lifelong repercussions. The 1983 book Adult Children of Alcoholics by counselor and lecturer Janet G. Woititz was a groundbreaking work that introduced many people to the dysfunctional similarities frequently seen in this group of people. The thesis is that many children of alcoholics share a common illness by growing up with an alcoholic.

Growing Up With An Alcoholic Is A Disease

Adults who grew up in alcoholic families even have access to their own 12-step program: Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA or ACOA). Their “laundry list” consists of 14 traits common to adults who grew up in alcoholic or similarly dysfunctional households. Traits include low self-esteem, dependency, difficulty with emotions, and fear of abandonment.

The basic foundation of ACA is that growing up with an alcoholic is itself a disease. Furthermore, growing up with an alcoholic is oftentimes a trigger for becoming an alcoholic as an adult. Many children of alcoholics eventually marry alcoholics and find themselves once again living in a dysfunctional, often abusive, family unit.

Other children of alcoholics develop a variety of mental and emotional issues. Depression and anxiety are common mental illnesses for the children of alcoholics. There is also the risk of co-occurring alcoholism and mental illness, which requires dual diagnosis treatment.

Life After Growing Up With An Alcoholic

There are many reasons growing up with an alcoholic has such a profound and lasting impact on children. The presence of alcoholism tends to affect the behavior of everyone around it. Parents in alcoholic households tend to deny that a problem is present, and children in these environments learn to deny that problems exist rather than face them. Growing up in an alcoholic household means that children are regularly presented with uncontrolled and unhealthy substance use. Children are often repelled and frightened by the behavior that accompanies excessive drinking and feel that they never want to go near alcohol themselves. Nevertheless, many do experiment with alcohol as adults—as most people do—and when this happens, many do not know how to drink moderately. Adult children of alcoholics are also at greater risk of developing other kinds of substance use problems, or other compulsive behaviors.

Lucida Treatment Tackles Alcoholism

Lucida Treatment helps treat alcoholism through detox and therapy. Alcohol detox helps your body purge alcohol from your system, and overcome your physical dependency on alcohol. After detox, therapy tackles the psychological roots of alcoholism. At Lucida Treatment, we offer a wide variety of therapies professionally designed to help you get and stay sober. Therapies offered at Lucida Treatment’s alcohol addiction treatment center include:

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Program
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy Program
• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy Program
• Family Therapy Program
• Gestalt Therapy Program
• Group Therapy Program
• Individual Therapy Program
• Psychodrama Therapy Program
• Trauma Therapy Program

If you want to get sober, Lucida Treatment can help! Contact us online or call us today at 1.866.947.7299 to overcome alcoholism for good!