Addiction & the Holidays, How Drug Rehab Centers Can Help Your Family Stay Together

The holiday season represents a special time of year that places a heavy emphasis on the importance of family with friends. While good tidings and good will remain the overall message, families that contend with deep-seated issues for the majority of the year may well “spontaneously combust” under the pressures that come with the holiday season.

This is especially the case for individuals and families living with addiction.

It can be hard to accept the need for treatment help let alone address an addiction problem during this most busy time of year. Drug rehab centers can provide much needed guidance and support for the recovering addict as well as the family.

Feel free to call our toll-free helpline at 888-646-0635Who Answers? for information on drug rehab center treatment options.

Addiction & the Family

Family therapy will help to improve your relationships.

It can be easy to view “the addict” as the problem when addiction seems to be the root of household chaos and conflict. Granted, the addict makes a conscious choice to keep abusing drugs (or alcohol), but addiction doesn’t typically develop out of the blue. More often than not, underlying emotional issues fuel an addiction problem.

According to the Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions, the people that make up a family function as a system or unit. Much like a system, when addiction exists within a family, the system changes to accommodate addiction’s effects. When left untreated, the effects of addiction only work to cause more problems within a family, especially during the holiday season.

Drug Rehab Center Benefits

Drug Education

Most everyone knows of the more obvious aspects of addiction, such as compulsive drug use and bad behavior and the effects had on the family. What may be less so apparent are the mechanisms that underlie addiction in terms of the underlying thinking patterns and logic that drives addiction behavior.

According to the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration, drug rehab centers make it a point to educate family members about how addiction works and the vicious cycle of compulsive drug use that addiction breeds. In effect, the more family members understand what the addict goes through the better equipped they are to deal with it in healthy ways.

Family Therapy

While it’s important for the addict to work through the underlying issues that drive drug-using behaviors, the family’s role in the recovery process is no less important. Drug rehab centers use the family therapy setting as a means for helping family members develop healthy communication styles while building healthy relationships within the family unit.

Family Support in Rehab

Support Groups

Each person in a family internalizes the effects of addiction in his or her own way. For this reason, it’s important that members enter into some form of recovery much like the addict receives support in his or her recovery.

Drug rehab centers offer support group treatment for spouses or significant others as well as for teenagers. In effect, these groups help family members heal from the effects of addiction while developing healthy ways of coping as the addict progresses through the recovery process.

While entering drug rehab center treatment before the holidays may not seem like the most opportune time, families in crisis really can’t afford the luxury of time when addiction is an issue.

If you’re considering entering drug rehab and need help finding a program that can address your specific needs, call our toll-free helpline at 888-646-0635Who Answers?.