Drug abuse – whose ‘fault’ is it?
I saw a newspaper advertising board proclaiming that parents are the cause of teen’s substance abuse. Well yes, substance abuse like all symptoms of emotional disturbance has its roots in childhood. And yes, inadequate, neglectful, toxic parenting creates emotional problems. Creating ‘fault lines’ in their children...
But I wonder if it is useful to be so very judgemental about it. I suspect that the more we blame the more defensive these parents will get. After all these parents were children too once and they probably had parents who could not parent quite well enough to create a resilient and emotionally stable child...and then adult. The parents have ‘fault lines’ of their own...
It seems that some people may well be born with a greater propensity to become addicted to substances. But if we think these substances do – they alter consciousness and dim memory and pain. So anyone with emotional pain may well find it seductive to escape into substance abuse.
Substance abuse, and I don’t include a drink or two at an 18th birthday party or a varsity experiment with marijuana, is complicated. I remember a varsity friend many years ago who was caught with marijuana and was sentenced to lashes. His father had always smoked marijuana and may well have introduced his son to it. His father was devastated. And yet, interestingly enough it was a high functioning family.
Where does one draw the line? Difficult – and perhaps also dependent on the laws we live in. Sometimes the laws themselves create problems...after all would you let you daughter tell the police she was raped if you knew she might be imprisoned for having sex out of marriage? And yet in South Africa it is an unusual varsity student who has not had sex. And we accept it.
Also remember that trauma from outside the family can create drug dependencies as well and sometimes the trauma can be so great that the family cannot contain it. Or the child for some reason has hidden it or it has become an unconscious presence rather than a conscious one in her mind.
We also have come out of a particularly toxic political system. Migrant labour destroyed family life and took parents and especially father from children. And to maintain a belief in Apartheid one had as a white person to have quite a schizoid belief system. In fact we were all part of a sort of ‘Red queen’ fantasy. We had civil war and war on our borders and beyond. People went to detention prison and many were tortured severely for political reasons. It created family traumas of nasty, painful kinds. So why would we as a nation be emotionally stable and resilient?
I am not, and never have been an advocate of mind changing substances – I like my mind as it is...but I also know that being too narrow in ones beliefs can create problems too. Of course one knows about gateway drugs – and I know that a vulnerable teen could be hooked into a drug culture in a few hours or days...
I worry when we look at problems in judgemental ways though. As soon as we do this we close avenues where healing can happen. And when one child is addicted you will also find a family struggling or even in very deep emotional trouble and dysfunction. Often at least one parent will show signs of an addictive personality. They might drink too much, eat too much or too little, exercise too much, clean too much...Or simply be not ‘good enough’ (D.W.Winnicott) parents.
So yes, when a child shows troubles – with school, anti-social behaviour and so on one must look to the family and the child’s immediate environment. Therapy just with the child overlooks the fact that the family is a system and if the system is troubled at least one member of the family will probably act it out in such a way as it becomes visible to the rest of the world...
But please, try to walk a little in those parent’s shoes a bit. Yes they may seem controlling, mean, inadequate, stupid, defensive, unpleasant, and authoritarian – you chose the adjective. But it will not help the addicted child to be judgemental and punishing towards the parents...
All it will do is make the parent look for some ‘expert’ who tells them that their child ‘has an addictive personality and they were born that way’ or in a less sophisticated community that they were ‘bewitched’.
Far better to face the problem with the parent with empathy. Be understanding and supportive and help them to see how they and their family got to this point and how to find ways of creating a better family system....
And I so wish we had better systems in place to teach parenting before the babies arrive and support and mentoring for parents while parenting especially those who might be at risk of becoming inadequate or even toxic parents. And remember money does not improve parenting necessarily!
Imagine if we all had go to parenting sessions during our first pregnancy (father and mother, even if they are no longer together). I think that would really help – especially if it is therapeutic and discussion based but also teaches child development. It is always so much better to prevent problems – costs so much less in money and misery too...