Families That Enable Drug Abuse
Drug abuse has the potential to tear families apart, and it can cause a variety of economic, social, physical and legal problems. According to the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a survey sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, "an estimated 21.8 million Americans aged 12 or older were current (past month) illicit drug users." Drug abuse can impact individuals and families in different ways, but drug abuse is a progressive problem that has the ability to affect anyone regardless of gender, class, or race.
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Financial Enabling
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It is no secret that drug abuse can be financially costly. According to Kropenske et al., the inability to function at work is a sign that intensified drug abuse could be occurring. Arriving late or not at all, the inability to positively interact with coworkers and poor performance are potential effects of intensified drug abuse that can ultimately affect employment status and financial income. If a person loses her job because of drug abuse, she may be forced to seek financial support from her parents or siblings. While families ultimately want their family members to succeed, bailing out a drug abusing family member financially can amount to enabling drug abuse. While intentions may be genuine, this may empower the drug abusing individual to continue using.
Silence
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Some families may enable drug abuse by hiding a specific family member's problem from other members of the family. A mother who knows her son is abusing methamphetamines but neglects to tell the father, for instance, is enabling drug abuse. Hiding the problem from other family members prohibits the problem from coming to light initially, but it does not actually eradicate the problem.
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Parental Drug Abuse
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Kropenske et al. claim that "substance abuse is a family problem in both a biological and psychological sense." Under this view, abusing substances is in itself an enabler for other families to abuse substances also. It is feared that not only do offspring of drug abusers have an increased biological tendency to follow in their parents' footsteps, but they also develop psychological coping mechanisms similar to the mechanisms they see their parents use. If the parents abuse, it gives the children an excuse to use.
Denial
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Most forms of enabling are complicit or even proactive and overt, but denial is also a characteristic of families that enable drug abuse. By denying that the drug abuse even occurs, a family ultimately perpetuates and exacerbates the problem. Denial is a mechanism or trick the drug abuser or codependents can use to avoid the problem and continue enabling the drug abuse.
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