How Codependency is Preventing Your Addicted Child from Recovering
By: A Forever Recovery
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How Codependency is Preventing Your Addicted Child from Recovering
Substance abuse is a growing problem in this country, one of which has to be addressed as soon as is possible. The problem with drug and alcohol addiction has grown more quickly than other problems have, all leading to other, additional challenges and difficulties that abound from substance abuse. Substance abuse, in general, is on the level now of being a full-on epidemic in this country according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In many cases, codependency and enabling are reasons for individuals sinking deeper into addiction instead of recovering.
Substance Abuse in the US Increasing
While previous decades showed a country where much of the substance abuse that was occurring was occurring because of drugs being trafficked into the nation. However, now a lot of the drug abuse that takes place is because these substances are manufactured in the United States. What has been happening here is that drug and alcohol addiction is a huge problem factor in this nation now in part because of just how common locally made substances are for those who want to take part in them.
Studies show for example that tens of thousands of meth labs are busted every single year in the United States when just a few years ago ninety percent of meth in the U.S. came from other countries. This has created a huge problem in this country too because now Americans can either get drugs that are imported in or that are produced in the United States.
This has virtually doubled the job of governments and law enforcement groups all across the country to do something about this problem effectively.
Codependent Parent-Child Relationships
Codependent parent-child relationships are a significant contributor to the above problem too. But what is enabling? What is an enabling behavior? True enough, this is a big factor also in the spread of drug and alcohol addiction and substance abuse in general among the nation’s youth.
Enabling and Codependency
Enabling is a situation in which parents end up helping their child’s addiction to continue when really they think they are helping them in some other way. It is in a parent’s nature to help their child, and that is very true, but it is also very true to say that parents often fall into a problem where they make things worse for their child by assisting them.
The logic here is that an addict must hit rock bottom before they are willing to get help. When you give a user food, money, lend them a car, provide them with a phone, pay their bills, let them stay at your home, etc. you are preventing them from hitting rock bottom. This is what parents do when they are struggling with codependency and enabling.
Instead, they need to focus on using a tough love approach, and they need to refuse to provide any help or assistance to their addicted adult child until that son or daughter is willing to go to rehab. For more information on how enablement occurs, and how you can break your codepencency, call A Forever Recovery. Long-term sobriety and recovery is a possibility.