Divorce And Drug Addiction

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Divorce with its destructive influence, in my opinion, is one of the main reasons for the development of drug addiction. In my practice, 80% of addicted clients come from broken families. When working in depth with them, the connection of their addiction to the event that happened becomes obvious.

Why is this happening?

Divorce traumatizes the entire family. For both spouses, it is a crisis when you need to build your whole life in a new way. But they are adults and they can handle it. The child's whole world is crumbling. The concept of home, family, security is disappearing. Everything that he believed in is devalued. He begins to realize that his life will never be the same again …

For their own pain, parents do not notice how much their children are suffering. Silently, alone with my misfortune. Only by the changes in behavior can you understand that something is wrong with them. Very often, wanting to protect loved ones, children deliberately hide their experiences. They try to adapt to the existing reality on their own. Nevertheless, it is during this period that they most of all need support and understanding, and often professional psychological help.

Marriage is not always possible and needs to be saved. Sometimes it has long been destroyed, even before the moment of the official divorce. Sometimes this is the best outcome of events. And here, often, there is no fault of anyone. However, in the absence of proper assistance and support, it will have a number of disastrous consequences.

After all, for a child this is a trauma - his heart is broken in two. And it will take a lot of effort and time to regain the lost integrity.

How exactly divorce affects the formation of addiction

The negative effect is not so much the divorce itself as the inability of the parents to get out of it, having come to an agreement and staying in a normal relationship.

Divorce becomes a war, a division in which everything good is forgotten, even the fact that despite the break of the marital agreement, they will forever remain parents.

The factors listed below exacerbate an already painful process for children and contribute to the formation of addiction in the future.

Forcing the mother or father out of the child's life

Prohibition to see children. Arranging scandals at every meeting - to discourage the second parent from meeting the child. All this deprives the child of the right to contact, the ability to keep in touch. And makes him even more unhappy.

The mother of one addict every time his father came to visit and gave a gift to his little daughter. Demonstratively before his eyes, she threw him into the trash, made a scandal and kicked him out. She achieved her goal - his visits stopped …

Forbidding to communicate with the father, the mother often deletes from the child's life the entire ancestral branch on the paternal side. That becomes a solid foundation in the formation of internal inferiority.

Impairment of the second parent in the eyes of the child

This includes all sorts of mudslinging. Attempts to portray the ex-spouse in an exclusively negative light. Take out the pain that the partner has caused, sometimes on the child.

Often phrases are heard - "Your mother is still rubbish", "Your father is a drunk with no hands", "And you are the same goat, like your father" or "You will grow up and be the same. Well, go to your daddy”- although abandoned on emotions. And the child often has no choice but to become the same goat as his father in the future, because this is perhaps the only way to identify with him, the only way to feel close to him …

Pulling the child to his side

The child automatically takes the side of the parent who, in his opinion, suffers the most. And it becomes at one with him. The abandoned parent's failure to accept his part of the responsibility for breaking up the relationship, setting the children up against the initiator of the divorce, further distorts their reality, makes it impossible to adequately cope with the loss. Addiction in this case becomes a way of revenge, a way of punishing someone who has left the family. The child ceases to be responsible for his life, becomes a drug addict in order to unconsciously make the departed parent suffer, and blame himself for leaving the family - “Look what happens because you left us” …

Ultimatum - choose one

This is an impossible choice. How can you choose one of the two dearest people? It also consists of both of them. It's like saying - “Cut off one leg - why do you need the other? You will have one, she loves you, tries for you, isn't that enough for you?

Blaming the child for divorce

Children blame themselves for the breakdown of the family without it. Feel bad, inferior. And any, even hints, incredibly enhance this feeling and only further confirm their belief in this. After which one does not want to live … After all, there is guilt, and as you know, it requires punishment. And it is addiction that becomes its atonement.

Excessive fixation

Children often stay with their mother after a divorce. Its fixation on the child (especially the son) becomes all-consuming. Symbiotic relationships are formed. He becomes "king", "prince". A jealous attitude arises. Unwillingness to share it with anyone. The child is now required to psychologically replace the man in the mother's life. To be forever small, helpless, not growing up, so that this relationship lasts forever … To feel needed in these relationships …

Extra

When parents create new families, the child from the first marriage often becomes superfluous.

In my practice, I come across the fact that an addicted client is in a situation where everyone has their own family - mom has a new husband and children, dad has a new wife and children. Everyone seems to be good. But he feels superfluous. He never managed to find his place in the family system, in the extended family.

And sometimes there is a requirement of the second spouse (wife) to prohibit communication with children from the first marriage, the requirement that they stay with the parent with whom they live, and even a ban on providing any assistance. And often this communication remains, but it is very formal.

If you've been through a divorce, don't wonder why your child became addicted.

The departed parent is a huge hole in the inner world that cannot be filled with anything.

All this affects the formation of drug addiction, since it deprives a person of internal support - there are too many unbearable feelings. A person is looking for support outside himself. Something to rely on, to hide from an intolerable reality. But these should not be people - their support is very fragile and unreliable, they are prone to betrayal at any moment. For him, there is only one way out - drugs …

Psychological tasks

The task, first of all, is to reunite all interrupted contacts inside. Restore connections. Take back the right to belong to your roots. The right to have both a father and a mother. Adopt an excluded parent into your life. And these are more internal processes, since external, some communication can be maintained. Give yourself the right to wants and needs in relation to your lost parent. The right to your sensual impulses, to grievances and expectations.