Getting Your Family Involved in Your Recovery

By Leslie Davis

Whether you realize it or not, your family has an important role to play in your recovery from drug and alcohol abuse. Besides yourself, your family is likely the most affected by your addiction. They will also be your main support system as you make your way through the recovery process, and will need to be on the same page as you when it comes to your successful recovery. Including your family in your treatment through family therapy is important to ensuring that the proper communication and support exists in your family system.

Why Family Therapy?

Drug and alcohol abuse affects all members of a family, not just the person using. Your family members may be angry at you, afraid of what will happen to you, embarrassed by you or feel abandoned by you. They may try to ignore you or cut you out of their lives completely. In extreme situations, family members may seek legal protection against you.

Even if you attend a drug or alcohol abuse treatment program and recover from your addiction, your family may not ever fully trust you or accept you back into their lives. You may have isolated yourself from your family so much during your addiction that trying to reconnect with them after recovery is extremely difficult. Family therapy gives all family members a chance to address how your substance abuse has affected them, and find a way for you to operate again as a family.

Effectiveness of Family Therapy

Family therapy in substance abuse treatment is still rare, but does have many positive effects when it is used. Through family therapy, you can draw on your family’s strengths and resources to help you find or develop ways to live without reliance on drugs or alcohol. This type of therapy can also help families become aware of their own needs, improve communication, provide healing, make necessary changes to help you in recovery, and learn to prevent substance abuse from continuing to later generations.

Family therapy that involves more than just educating family members on your addiction has proven to be highly effective in the treatment of substance abuse. Integrated family involvement in drug and alcohol abuse treatment is positively associated with increased entry into treatment, decreased dropout rates and better long-term outcomes, according to a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) report.

The report indicated that when family members can understand how they may have participated in your substance abuse and are willing to actively support your recovery, you have a higher chance of a successful long-term recovery. Getting your family to participate in your treatment also allows the focus of treatment to be on any larger family issues that may have contributed to your addiction, and not just your substance abuse.

Family therapy can be effective because it provides a neutral forum for family members to solve problems. The therapist is not there to specifically address your issues, but to improve communication for all family members and encourage positive changes.

Family Programs at Drug and Alcohol Abuse Treatment Centers

While part of your treatment at a drug and alcohol abuse treatment center will include individual and group counseling, family therapy is essential to a successful and long-term recovery. Family therapy is more than just educating your family on substance abuse and its related behavioral, medical and psychological consequences. An effective family program will involve your family members in both educational and therapeutic support for recovery.

Sierra Tucson, an innovative drug and alcohol abuse treatment center in Arizona, has an intensive family program that recognizes how critical family is to the recovery process. Through its program, family members are guided to work on their own issues, develop self-care techniques and learn to support their loved one while healing together as a family.

At Sierra Tucson, therapists model and teach new communication skills, help identify problems that have significantly impacted the family, and work to change attitudes and behaviors. Specific programs are available to couples and young family members to strengthen those important family dynamics, and individual counseling is available to those family members who require it.