Drug Addiction Within Families

Mariah Vega

3/15/16

Composition 1

Cynthia Duprey

Informative Essay

When turning on your local news channels in the morning what are some of the common topics being discussed that you have noticed? Probably the presidential election, acts of crime or the addiction problem on the rise. Over the past couple of years the addiction rate has skyrocketed and it seems that it’s almost an everyday occurrence that you hear about someone overdosing or something happening that affects society in a negative way. When thinking about addiction not many people think about the families who are involved, but in reality they are affected in a big way too. Families suffer in many ways, more than what could even be thought of, such as an emotional toll or even a tidal wave effect from just that one immediate family member suffering from addiction.

Families of drug and alcohol abusers tend to pay a huge emotional and mental toll. Many studies have been done on random families with a known immediate family member such as a mother, father, brother, sister, son, daughter, and spouse to see the exact emotional toll it does on the families. Most of the respondents to these surveys and interviews say their family member’s addiction has had a major effect on their own mental and emotional health (Saad). In the surveys and interviews done here in the United States about seventy percent of people said their emotional and mental state was affected by having a close family member addicted to alcohol or drugs (Saad). Another major issue that has been seen while analyzing data that was collected was the spouse of the abuser is who suffers the most out of all the immediate family with a shocking fifty one percent of negative effects (Saad). Some of the negative effects include financial situations being affected because the abuser is not attending their job on regular bases or even losing it. Some have reported the relationship with friends and family took a turn for worse because the user...