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Addiction is a Family Disease

Posted on by Christy Weeks

Addiction is often referred to as a “family disease” because it does not exist in a vacuum, impacting only the addict. It permeates the entire family and impacts each person individually.

In order to protect, help or “fix” an addict, family members often develop unhealthy coping mechanisms. In response to a loved one’s unhealthy addiction, family members start to adopt their own unhealthy habits. These habits can take on various forms including, but not limited to: trust issues that lead to snooping, denial of the addiction, lying to oneself and others, protecting by hiding the addiction, feelings of shame and embarrassment, internalizing the addiction as one’s fault, working overtime to  help the addict, losing oneself through constant focus on the addict, experiencing obsessive worry and thoughts about the addict.
When an addict gets the help they need, family members impacted by the disease must also seek help. The entire family unit can get better by each person working individually at the same time. Three of the main coping mechanisms that need to be discarded once the addict is in treatment are enabling, controlling and rescuing.
A family member enables by continuing to protect the addict or support them while they are in active addiction. By accepting the bad behavior through monetary or social support, the addict continues in using because they are enabled to do so. Many addicts need to “hit bottom” in order to be susceptible to addiction treatment. Ending the enablement of their disease allows them to hit bottom and thus seek help faster.
Rescuing is when a family member gains a sense of identity and heroism through saving the addict.  Over time the rescuer loses part of themselves and adopts a mono-identity of being the one who saves the addict from his/her own troubles. Social or personal activities that were once important to the rescuer take the backseat while they focus on the addict’s problems. When an addict doesn’t need to be rescued anymore because they have sought drug treatment, the rescuer feels a sense of emptiness and loss of identity that they need to build back up by focusing on themselves.
Controlling is when a family member believes they have power over the thoughts, actions or experiences of another person. Thoughts such as “its my fault he/she drinks” or “if only I could make him/her happy she wouldn’t use drugs” can become very destructive to one’s self-esteem. Realizing and accepting that individuals cannot control the behaviors or actions of others becomes a very freeing experience for the controller.
Working on these three behaviors in the family system can start to significantly alleviate the damage caused by the disease of addiction.  Drug and alcohol treatment centers have family programs that work on these and other behaviors that can be the first step toward overcoming the family disease of addiction.  

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Prominent Doctors and Celebrities Advocating Drug Treatment

Posted on by Christy Weeks

Last month, a group of two dozen prominent doctors and groups such as the Drug Policy Alliance started a legal campaign for Cameron Douglas, son of Michael Douglas. Cameron Douglas had his prison term nearly doubled in January 2010 when heroin and Suboxone® were found in his cell. His initial sentence was 5 years for possession of methamphetamine and has since been extended four and a half years.

According to the Drug Policy Alliance, most inmates face loss of prison privileges when caught with drugs and Douglas’ sentence is one of the harshest ever given by Federal Judge for drug possession in prison to date. The legal campaign to appeal Douglas’ charge is an attempt to voice that addiction should be met with drug treatment rather than prison time and to highlight the Drug Policy Alliance’s stance that “the federal corrections systems, in particular, but corrections in general have for a long time ignored the treatment need of their inmates.” And Douglas expressed his needs wholeheartedly by pleading to the Federal Judge that he was just trying to feel “normal.” According to the New York Daily News, Douglas stated “You see, your honor, I cannot seem to find comfort in my own skin…I feel ashamed. I feel defeated.”

The campaign for Douglas comes at a time when Hollywood has been more vocal than ever in advocating for treatment over imprisonment. Hollywood celebrities like Matthew Perry and Martin Sheen advocate for NADCP (National Association of Drug Court Professionals) by showing that drug courts work. While nearly 80% of inmates with addiction problems don’t receive treatment, the evidence based practices of drug courts indicate that those in drug court are six times more likely to stay in treatment long enough for them to get better. Both the NADCP and those advocating for Douglas believe, as Martin Sheen says, “when a court orders an addict to treatment instead of prison we all rise.” Hopefully their voice and advocacy will allow more addicts who don’t feel “comfort in their own skin” the option of effective drug treatment over prison.

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Enhancing Our Recovery Fellowship

Posted on by Christy Weeks

Welcome to the Harmony Foundation Recovery Blog. This blog is intended to enhance the recovery process for Harmony alumni and friends through information sharing in an extended fellowship. We know that the correlation between healthy long-term sobriety and participation in the recovery fellowship is very strong. Sobriety is not a solitary activity; it is a community activity. Our 12-step programs are a major source of that community, but experience teaches that we grow spiritually when we extend ourselves beyond our “neighborhood meeting” as well.

The blog will:

  • Give Harmony Alumni and friends an opportunity to reach out to the place where it all began, the friends you made here, and the new friends you will make.
  • Keep alumni aware of what is new at Harmony, provide information about upcoming events, and help alumni be of service to the community.
  • Provide greater community awareness of the disease of addiction and recovery services.

Enhancing our recovery fellowship…

Marv Ventrell

I’m privileged to write this first blog. I am the new Director of our new Harmony Community and Alumni Relations Office (CARO). Our office exists to enhance communication between Harmony and its alumni, provide continued services to our alumni, and to provide greater community awareness of the disease of addiction and recovery services. It is an honor to do this work for this institution and our office takes its obligation very seriously. It is our hope that through this blog, and the many other new alumni and community programs under development, the Harmony community will become larger, stronger, and more helpful than it has ever been.

Our 12th step tells us, “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics [and addicts], and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” This is the privilege and obligation of all of us. We help others and we enhance our own sobriety when we carry the message. And “we have to give it away in order to keep it.” So this blog, if you will, is your opportunity to live in the joy and fellowship of the 12th step. As it says in the 12 & 12:

The joy of living is the theme of the Twelfth Step, and action is the key word. Here we turn outward toward our fellow alcoholics who are still in distress. Here we experience the kind of giving that asks no rewards. Here we begin to practice all Twelve Steps of the program in our daily lives so that we and those about us may find emotional sobriety. (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions p. 106)

We know that recovery is a lifelong journey. While your recovery may have begun at Harmony, it continues and grows wherever you are. Recently, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) adopted a new working definition of recovery that recognizes this and the value of community relations in the process, as follows:

Recovery is a process of change whereby individuals work to improve their own health and wellness and to live a meaningful life in a community of their choice while striving to achieve their full potential. Principles of Recovery:

  •  Person-driven;
  •  Occurs via many pathways;
  •  Is holistic;
  •  Is supported by peers;
  •  Is supported through relationships;
  •  Is culturally-based and influenced;
  •  Is supported by addressing trauma;
  •  Involves individual, family, and community strengths and responsibility;
  •  Is based on respect; and
  •  Emerges from hope.

Harmony Foundation shares this belief and welcomes SAMHSA’s new definition as an affirmation of the treatment field’s work, and as motivation for our continued support of one another. We believe we have a greater opportunity than has ever existed to provide a foundation for lifelong recovery and to continue to support one another as we leave treatment and begin our lives in recovery.

Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of Happy Destiny. May God bless and keep you until then. (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 164)

We would be honored if you would subscribe to our blog and we welcome your comments.

Won’t you join us?
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Marvin Ventrell, JD is the Director of CARO – the Community and Alumni Relations Office at Harmony Foundation. CARO’s function is to support Harmony Alumni in the recovery process post-treatment. CARO also works to educate the public on the disease of addiction and Harmony’s services. Marvin believes his work at Harmony is the culmination of a lifelong journey of professional service. During his 27-year career, he has been an attorney, a public interest association director, and a teacher. He is the author of two books and numerous professional journal articles. His career has been dedicated to advocating for children and families in crisis and developing institutional systems to address community needs. He previously served as CEO of the National Association of Counsel for Children and the Juvenile Law Society. He is a recipient of the University of Colorado Kempe Award and the American Bar Association Child Advocacy Award, and is a Bar Fellow Emeritus of the Colorado Bar Foundation.