Nothing is more perplexing, exasperating, and discouraging to me than the way the American culture has diminished the way it looks at addiction. Perhaps it’s because so many people are addicted, themselves, and choose to live in denial serious affects of it on themselves and their loved ones, but there is no denying, addiction devastates lives, marriages and families.
As we debate adding more addiction to the culture, through marijuana legalization, we’ve forgotten how devastating alcoholism can be. Or maybe we just don’t want to give up our own vices. Regardless, maybe it’s time to revisit some inconvenient truths.
A 2014 Study, in Addiction.com noted that nearly half of all people with an alcohol problem experienced divorce.
Overall, the researchers concluded, nearly half (48.3%) of the study participants with a past or present case of alcohol use disorder got divorced at some point in their lives. Between the first and second waves of the survey, the divorce rate for these individuals was 15.5%. By comparison, only 30% of the participants unaffected by alcohol use disorder had gone through a divorce. Between the first and second waves of NESARC, these individuals had a divorce rate of just 4.8%.
And an even sadder development in the alcoholic abuse dynamic is the codependency factor. Medical Daily notes that divorce is more likely when only one partner is afflicted with alcoholism, but if both are equally addicted, divorce is less likely.
Both heavy-drinking couples and nondrinking couples yielded about a 30 percent divorce rate. Marriages in which only one spouse drank heavily — having six or more drinks or drinking until intoxicated — ended in divorce 50 percent of the time. Researchers also noticed a higher rate of divorce in marriages with a heavy-drinking wife, but warned that there wasn’t enough data to call it a significant find.
“Our results indicate that it is the difference between the couple’s drinking habits, rather than the drinking itself, that leads to marital dissatisfaction, separation, and divorce,” Dr. Leonard explained in the statement. “Heavy drinking spouses may be more tolerant of negative experiences related to alcohol due to their own drinking habits.”
The American culture has been sold a bill of goods on drinking and alcoholism. Like so many other things in the culture, we have found a way to make a devastating circumstance socially acceptable, even though it is known to devastate lives. New Life House gives us an example of how we have soft soaped a despicable situation. They’ve completely removed alcoholism from addiction/disease status and made it more soft and fuzzy.
When an alcoholic takes a look at their problem from an objective point of view, they can see very similar issues they share with any drug addict. Inability to control their use, obsession, making choices despite known consequences, changes in their thinking—all of which is under a shroud of denial; they really are no different. Alcoholism is merely another form of addiction, but with a name.
Alcoholism has often been referred to as the most inappropriately named disease, as it has to do with so much more than alcohol. An alcoholic suffers even when alcohol is not consumed. Ask anyone who has been around Alcoholics Anonymous, almost universally they will admit that their problem with drinking was much more of a solution than the problem itself. They consumed it to the point of dependence, or in other words, addiction.
We’ve just scratched the surface here, on alcoholism. And we haven’t even touched on porn, marijuana, drugs, and the other internet addictions. The question I’d like to leave you with today, is why would we so easily dismiss the values of family, marriage, parenthood, relationships to protect our ability to indulge in destructive, addictive behavior?
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The biggest culprit of any addiction…”I don’t have a problem”. They can’t see past themselves to see the destruction they are causing. It seems it’s up to the ppl around them to grow stronger and learn to live without that person and only the shell they leave behind and hopefully there are enough good memories to remember them by. And some are the lucky ones and the addicts get the help they need and live a full life and hopefully help others realize the help that is needed and can somehow get through. For me, it’s going to have to be “what lesson am I supposed to be learning from this God? Please help me become a better person and show me the way to happiness through all the pain.” There seems to be no simple answer that I can find.