What Robert Downey Jr’s son can teach us about addiction in the family and love.
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Addiction is a disease that does significant harm to the fabric of many lives. It is brutal and has no prejudice on whom it inflicts or to whom or what it seeks to consume. It is ugly.
Addiction is caused, it appears, by both nature and nurture related issues. It should come to little surprise then that Robert Downey Jr’s son last week was arrested in possession of cocaine. This article is not about this particular incident per say. Robert Downey Jr’s well documented struggle with addiction and recovery was in the public eye because Downey is a public figure. His son; however, is not and so I will not directly comment on his son’s incident or recovery. From my experience working as an addiction counselor, the journey is never easy and the path is never without hazards. I suspect that having a father who is presumably and reportedly in active recovery can serve as a significant guide toward sobriety. That is good because by Downey’s own admission to the public he likely passed this addiction on not simply through the natural heredity of addiction, but also through the nurture of a drugged household.
As a father, there exists within this current incident reason for us to take note of the impact drug abuse has on family, on friends, and what can best be done to support a loved one that is spiraling into an addiction. First, it’s important to recognize that addiction follows a rather lineal decline. You can follow addictions trajectory, often beginning with thoughts of use, to the first use, and so on. If you have lived with someone that is heading into significant addiction, you see along the way, that things begin to occur that make it obvious. This person is not the same anymore. They are heading down a dangerous path. There are warning signs. Identifying these warning signs and not denying what you are seeing is a great way to learn when to take action. Confront them appropriately but also realize, if they are impaired from substance abuse or fully living in their addiction, they will not often listen. Addiction blinds them from itself. They cannot see their addiction and when they do finally see it, they cannot stop it alone.
Addiction has invisible tentacles of harm that have the ability to reach out from the abusing or active addict and take hold of the family or loved ones around them. Addiction does as much harm to relationships and the family unit as it does to the addict themselves. Therefore, families also need recovery. Even if they aren’t inhaling, ingesting, or injecting the drug, they most certainly are feeling the effects of it. The first step for a family that is dealing with addiction is to not focus on the addicted person. Focus on the needs of the family first. If you are or have ever been a part of a family that addiction has infiltrated, you know how indiscriminate the harm of addiction can be to the family unit. There is a recovery that must occur and in the same way the addict must focus on their recovery, the family most focus on theirs.
Love causes us to do blind things sometimes to ease the pain of addiction in those we love.
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Love is a deceptive thing when it comes to addiction. Many family members or friends think that they can just love the addict out of addiction. That does not work. You will not save the addict. You can’t intervene and “make the person better”. Furthermore, love causes us to do blind things sometimes to ease the pain of addiction in those we love. It begins often by lending out some money to our loved one. The addict needs a few extra bucks to pay for rent. You love them so you lend them some money to help out. What you’re not seeing is the reason they need money is because their addiction has taken their job. Take special note of this warning: any money you give to an addict that is actively feeding their addiction, goes directly to their addiction. Worse yet are parents that don’t like to see their children in the pains of withdrawal. Addicts will manipulate you emotionally and do all things necessary for you to help them end this pain. Parents without a strong will and without knowledge of what they are doing, often give them money or drive them to buy drugs. These are just two examples of the traps that “love” sets for us when addiction is concerned. In both cases, you are turned into, either knowingly or unknowingly, an enabler. You will soon be the addict’s best friend because you are now enabling them to continue the addiction. This is also a hard pill to swallow because from your perspective, you are trying to love them unconditionally. But addiction has conditions, so don’t be blinded by your love for the addict.
We need to recognize that love and support from family and friends are important things in the recovery of addiction, but they are not the most important thing. In fact, addicts can and most often do recover from addicted lives and find sobriety without the love and support of family and friends, so though it’s hard to hear, your love is not a necessity for sobriety to be realized by the one you love. Focus on your own needs as a family. The addict needs to take care of this on their own.
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A review of Robert Downey Jr’s statement to the public suggests that he recognizes the steps that are ahead for his son and his family. He recognizes these steps because they are in the tracks that he himself left. Here is hoping that his son follows those tracks that he left to through active recovery.
There exist some wonderful resources for loved one’s or family members of substance abusing or addicted persons. Visit Al-Anon and Nar-Anon online for additional information or check out Learn2cope.org.
Photo: Pixel Addict/Flickr
“Addicts will manipulate you emotionally…”
Very insightful points about the passing down of these behaviors from one generation to the next…
I never met my ex’s parents…but I’m sure I would have seen a lot of some of the same scary behaviors in them, too….
An old HS friend reached out to us and we met her and tried to welcome her into our group…as the night progressed she drank more and more wine and told the same old stories about her brilliant alcoholic dysfunctional parents….it wasn’t hard to see that the apple did not fall far from the tree…