You may learn to give in order to get. In fact, this may be a primary way of getting your emotional needs met if you grew up in an addicted family. When you see a person with a problem of some type and believe that you can be of some use, you are ready and willing to “help.” This meets your need for attention and emotional attachment in a superficial way, but it is a second-rate substitute. This is the coping strategy that we call codependency.

As the addiction progresses, your giving will increase, and so will the addict’s demands and dysfunctional behavior.
While this is happening, you are likely to become angry.

You will get frustrated because things are not changing. The person is not responding to your demand that something be done about the addiction, and you are getting tired of endless disappointments and broken promises.

You may become depressed. In an atmosphere of continuous emotional deprivation, you may begin to believe that you are not worthy of love and attention. You feel unable to change your situation, and you may begin to feel hopeless about things ever being different.

If the addict is emotionally or physically abusive, you may also begin to have a sense of guilt and shame as a result of the abuse. If your self-esteem was already shaky before you entered the relationship, as is often the case with those who grew up in an addicted family, it now begins to take a free fall. But the more your self-esteem falls, the more likely you are to become further engaged in the game playing that allows the addiction to continue.

The insecurity and unpredictability of living with an addict leads to an emphasis on control. As the addiction gets more out of hand, you become more focused on maintaining control. Initially, this centers around the addict’s behavior.

If you could just control the supply of alcohol or the amount of spending money or could keep tabs at all times on the addict’s whereabouts, then maybe things would change for the better. But after a while a new dynamic appears in the relationship. You are criticized for being controlling, for not trusting, and for damaging the relationship. Your self-esteem falls further, and the addict has another excuse to use.

Of course, what is really controlling the whole relationship is the addiction itself. But this is difficult to see because of the subtle way in which the situation develops.

Since it is impossible to control the addict or the addiction, you might attempt to gain a sense of control in other settings and with other relationships, perhaps becoming overly intrusive regarding family members or coworkers. Any kind of ambiguity provokes anxiety, so you cannot relax until you have things under control. This often leads to conflict, and, since controlling people and situations is generally impossible, you become exhausted and overwhelmed from the effort. You may feel like the mythical character in Hades whose task is to roll a boulder up a hill; every time he nears the top the boulder rolls back down.

Because of the conflict and the negative consequences resulting from the addiction, relationships often break up.

You may finally become so unhappy that you leave, or the relationship may become abusive and you have to get away to be safe. If this is the case, it is important to remember that the effects of the addiction on your self-esteem, your coping strategies, and your way of relating to people will come with you. You will need to focus on your own recovery even if you leave the relationship.

Either way - whether you stay or leave - you will benefit from treatment and counseling for the effects the addiction has had on you. You will need to learn how to identify feelings accurately, how to get rid of the anger, how to assert yourself so as to get your emotional needs met, how to trust again, and how to release your urge to control the world around you.

Family members of addicts often develop their own problems with addiction. Eating disorders, such as compulsive overeating, are common in family members of addicts. It is also easy for family members to begin using drugs or alcohol to cope with the pain of dealing with an addict and to become addicted themselves. This is especially true if there is a family history of addiction and therefore a genetic susceptibility.

Elizabeth Connell Henderson, M.D.

Glossary

Appendix A: Regulation of Addictive Substances

Appendix B: Sources of Additional Information