dr james dobson what to do if you son is using drugs

Dr. Tim Clinton: Hi everyone. This is Dr. Tim Clinton, Executive Managing director of the James Dobson Family Constitute and President of the American Association of Christian Counselors. Wanted to take but a brief moment to let you know that we dear, appreciate and are praying for you. Our entire squad hither at Family Talk is doing that very thing.

And nosotros likewise wanted to encourage you, if you're struggling or yous could use some encouragement, to experience free to call usa and pray with us. Our toll free number is (877) 732-6825. That number once more is (877) 732-6825, or you could too connect with us online@drjamesdobson.org.

Thank you for letting u.s.a. be a part of your life every day. Nosotros are going to get through this. Dr. Dobson said, we are going to get through this challenging time and nosotros're going to exercise information technology together. Let'south go now to our regular programming.

David Meece: My father was an alcoholic. He would proceed these drinking and drug binges and he was admittedly merely vicious every bit a human being. I hateful he'south out of his mind. My blood brother and my sister and I saw him effort to kill my mom three different times. Of class the fear was he was going to plough on united states of america next. And he did i night, he drove his machine through my bedroom wall and announced he's going to kill everybody. Those terrible things that came about as a result of his addiction to booze and drugs were then traumatic that I blocked 'em out of my mind completely.

Roger Marsh: Well, that was certainly a heartbreaking account from our friend, Christian recording artist, David Meece. And sadly, I'grand sure many of you could identify with and empathize with that story likewise. Numerous adults are still dealing with the painful problems associated with alcoholism in their family unit and the bear on information technology had on them growing upward.

Did yous have a parent struggling in this surface area when you were a child? If and so, then today's broadcast will speak to you. In just a moment, Dr. Dobson will keep his conversation with 4 folks who grew upward with alcoholic parents in the abode. One of the members of our panel is licensed union family and kid counselor, Dr. Short Grayson. The other 3 individuals in the group asked to share their stories with anonymity. And so for the purposes of this interview, nosotros're calling them Ann, Chris and Joe.

As we rejoin this discussion, Dr. Dobson reads a listing of characteristics attributed to developed children of alcoholics. As was the case with yesterday'due south broadcast, the material nosotros're about to discuss is very sensitive in subject matter, so information technology'south not suitable for younger listeners. Parental discretion is advised. With that, let's hear again from Dr. Dobson and his four guests on this edition of Family Talk.

Dr. Dobson: We were talking last time virtually the experiences of these 4 people as children of alcoholics and what they went through, the pain that they experienced individually. At that place'south an amazingly consistent pattern from 1 person to the other. And I'm told if we had 100,000 people here, that would be true as well. There are merely these mutual characteristics.

In fact, that reminds me of the fact that in 1967 when I graduated from USC, I did non take a class in which we talked about adult children of alcoholics. It wasn't discussed then. Information technology wasn't recognized that there is this commonality. In that location is this frequent pattern of pain and the perpetuation of the problem amid those individuals who were children of alcoholics.

It would probably be wise at present in this 2d broadcast to talk about what those characteristics are. People are going to recognize themselves. And so I have a list here of 13 characteristics. I'm going to read them rather chop-chop and and so enquire y'all all to comment on what I've read. Okay? All right, here we go.

Number 1, adult children of alcoholics have to approximate at what normal is. They call up that what they feel is what everybody experiences. Two, adult children of alcoholics have difficulty in post-obit a projection through from beginning to end. Iii, adult children of alcoholics lie when it would be just every bit easy to tell the truth. 4, and I'm not going to repeat adult children of alcoholics. I'll say "they," approximate themselves without mercy; very hard on themselves. Five, they have difficulty having fun. Six, they take themselves very seriously. Seven, they accept difficulty with intimate relationships.

Dr. Dobson: Of the four of you lot, Chris, you've never been married. Take the other three had marital difficulties?

Ann: Yes, definitely.

Joe: I'k divorced.

Dr. Brusk Grayson: I'm divorced.

Dr. Dobson: All three are divorced. Isn't that interesting? Number viii, they overreact to changes over which they have no control. Number 9, they constantly seek approval and affirmation. Number 10, they experience they are different from other people. Number 11, they're either super responsible or super irresponsible. Y'all can't lose on that one. [crosstalk 00:05:26] Either one way or the other. You tin count on that.

Joe: Black or white.

Dr. Dobson: And number 12, they are extremely loyal. This one surprised me. They're extremely loyal, fifty-fifty in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved. And number thirteen, they are impulsive. They tend to lock themselves into a course of activity without giving serious consideration to culling behaviors or possible consequences. This impulsivity leads to confusion, cocky-loathing, and loss of command over their surroundings. Okay. React to the list of thirteen. What jumps out at you from what you've just heard?

Chris: What jumps out at me is the tremendous need for approval. I missed getting the affidavit I needed as a child. And what was okay one day, it was non okay the other day then there was tremendous confusion. And I have since learned that silence to me means disapproval. It ways I have to guess. And then never quite knowing where I stand now as an developed, earlier as a child, is I need that affirmation, that approving, "Chris, that's okay, this is not okay." Considering I don't take that developed inside me because I didn't have the opportunity to learn that as a kid.

Dr. Dobson: Yeah, Chris, even though you recognize that now, you sympathise that's why yous are equally you are, do y'all still detect yourself watching people, looking into their optics, seeing if they're rejecting you or accepting you lot?

Chris: Oh, I am so hypervigilant. My head knows that, just my middle, or the piddling daughter inside me doesn't know that. This picayune girl inside me needs the hug and say, "That'southward okay."

Dr. Dobson: Brusk, did you wait for blessing in your father and not discover it?

Dr. Brusk Grayson: I definitely did. I feel like in that location were a lot of times when I would get to my father with things that I had done, pictures that I had drawn or something, and I would say, "Look at this dad. Look what I did." And sometimes he would barely look up from his book and so look back and really not respond to it and say, "Oh, that'south prissy," but he really wouldn't even look at the paper.

Some other thing with me also is sometimes even now when I'm in a grocery store, it's kind of embarrassing to say, but I tin see a mother spank a little child or yell at a petty child, and even though I'm an developed, there's a part of me, that little child inside begins to cower and actually exist fearful. And I would never acknowledge that, but other adult children of alcoholics feel the same thing.

Dr. Dobson: Were you lot disciplined rather severely as a child?

Dr. Brusk Grayson: My parents were divorced when I was about five. My father never adult a drinking trouble. He was not a very harsh disciplinarian. My mother and stepfather who were both drinkers and were actually alcoholics. The disciplining was kind of sporadic. My mother would discipline u.s., but she wasn't strong enough or big enough to really hurt us as we grew up. But as soon as she got my alcoholic stepfather into the scene, he didn't know limits, and when he striking, he hit for good.

Dr. Dobson: Practise you know that 90% of all kid abuse is booze related? It reduces the inhibitory part that would keep you from going too far.

Joe: You know, my dad was very calumniating besides. Nevertheless, he too was an adult child of an alcoholic and he didn't know it. So in a sense, he was an adult only interim like a child on me, then to speak, when I was a child.

Dr. Short Grayson: It just perpetuates itself, generation after generation.

Joe: Information technology'due south a family affliction.

Dr. Dobson: Your children, Joe, are going to exist adult children of alcoholics.

Joe: They not simply are going to be, they are.

Dr. Curt Grayson: As a affair of fact, the actually, in talking about developed children of alcoholics, we discover it's a 3 generational problem. So even if your parents don't touch a drop of alcohol, you lot are just equally much afflicted because they were adult children of alcoholics and they did not learn how to parent past having no case.

Dr. Dobson: So it sometimes skips a generation doesn't it?

Dr. Curt Grayson: Information technology can.

Joe: Just it'south besides unconscious. I didn't attempt to transfer this stuff to my kids, but information technology was transferred; information technology was transferred unconsciously. The good news is today they know nigh it. They know that there is help. They know what happened to me and it'south out in the open. In that location's no more secrets, not in my family.

Dr. Dobson: Ann, we're dealing with number nine on this list, developed children of alcoholics constantly seek blessing and affidavit. Has that as well been a characteristic of your life? And equally a child, did you achieve for adult affirmation and not get it?

Ann: Unlike Chris, I didn't strive to go those A's for approving. That probably was considering my parents just about ignored me. Equally a child, I had no validation. I had no response from my parents. My female parent was so busy taking care of the alcoholic, I was pretty much left on my own. At that place was no 1 encouraging me to exercise well in school or no ane commenting if I did poorly in school. No help at all.

Dr. Dobson: What does it do to you lot all today when you practise something that y'all experience is done well or right and another person just doesn't happen to similar it? Suppose at piece of work you're trying to exercise a skillful job and the other individual doesn't mean to reject you or exist insulting, but just says, "I call up we ought to do it another way." Do you still feel it today? Are you still hypersensitive to that?

Ann: You get the feelings down within. I think you lot're always going to be sensitive, just today I can speak out and I tin can voice that feeling.

Dr. Dobson: What other items from this list of 13 jump out at you?

Joe: The i that jumps out at me, Dr. Dobson is this one whereby we're so serious. For years people used to say to me, "Joe, lighten up." And I'd say, "How?" I didn't really laugh until I was forty years old.

Dr. Dobson: Is that correct?

Joe: That's true. And I know I didn't weep until I was 40 years old, in my retentivity. And it wasn't until recovery that those emotions were released. Yous come across, I blimp my emotions and I but knew a few, and non knowing those emotions, how in the world could I laugh? How could I take joy in my life when I didn't have whatsoever joy in my life?

Joe: So we can get into a veil of tears, but the truth of the thing is, for me today, after a lot of work and a lot of recovery, recovery'south a lot of fun and laughing.

Dr. Dobson: And y'all tin express mirth today?

Joe: Yeah, you bet.

Dr. Curt Grayson: I call back with me, I was the one in the family unit who was the family clown and comic, and I was able to laugh and go on people off balance.

Dr. Dobson: That's ane of the methods of coping.

Dr. Brusk Grayson: That'southward right. That's correct. And for me, likewise being the one that stopped the fights, one of the ways I stopped fights in the family is I told a joke. I was able to do a somersault. I was able to juggle. I learned to juggle when I was young. I would practise kind of funny fiddling weird things to get my parents' attention off either striking me or getting in an argument with each other.

Joe: The basis of all comedy is tragedy.

Dr. Dobson: Sure it is.

Chris: I call back for me that the inconsistency of the behavior of my parents and especially my father is that I never knew when playtime would end up to exist a very dangerous time, that something would become incorrect. The string on the kite would break and all of a sudden my father would become extraordinarily upset and he would brainstorm to drink more, and it turned out to be a horrendous ... end upward in a hitting or beating or being sent to my room.

Dr. Dobson: And then he had a low frustration tolerance fifty-fifty when he was sober that lent itself to more than drinking.

Chris: He was never actually sober. I mean always the effect of the alcohol was there. Then that playful fiddling girl inside me, there'due south a function of me that'south finding out she'southward there and information technology's fun to discover her. There still is some fear and information technology's yet not okay to play because while I'g playing over here, at that place's some danger over here.

Dr. Dobson: Chris, permit me put you through something difficult, can I?

Chris: Certain.

Dr. Dobson: Permit'due south suppose that your begetter was able to visit y'all today and he was sober and you accept an opportunity to talk to him. What would you say to him?

Chris: Wow. If I had the opportunity to see my father, what I'd really like to say to him is that I wanted him. And when he was drinking, what I had was a bottle, and I wanted him. And I wanted the safety and the playful times to be at that place and be in that location more often. But not to take the bottle.

Dr. Dobson: Chris, would yous forgive him?

Chris: By faith, I have forgiven him.

Dr. Dobson: Would you tell him that?

Chris: Yes.

Dr. Dobson: Non simply for drinking but for abusing yous sexually?

Chris: Aye.

Dr. Dobson: You've forgiven him?

Chris: I have forgiven him by word of oral cavity, by confessing that and by religion. Information technology's dropping into my heart.

Dr. Dobson: Ann, what would yous say?

Ann: My dad'due south been dead for years now and nosotros never said, "I love you," and then I'd say, "I love you lot daddy."

Dr. Dobson: He never told y'all he loved y'all?

Ann: No.

Dr. Dobson: Did he love yous, Ann?

Ann: I'k sure he did in his own way. Just he likewise was the adult child of an alcoholic and didn't know how to express feelings.

Dr. Dobson: Did he ever put his arms around yous? E'er take y'all on his lap?

Ann: I never remember that, whatsoever times like that.

Dr. Dobson: You still miss it today?

Ann: Sure do.

Dr. Dobson: It's a void all these years subsequently.

Ann: That's right.

Dr. Dobson: Curt, what would you say to your father if you lot had an opportunity to talk to him?

Dr. Brusque Grayson: Well, fortunately both my parents are still live. My mother was the alcoholic, so actually a lot of my issues and talking would be with her. I'g really fortunate in that my female parent has had 8 years of sobriety and that's been a blessing to me and to our family.

Dr. Dobson: Have you been able to reconcile?

Dr. Brusk Grayson: Well, I have a little scrap. She understands now that she is sober, some of the things that happened, and I'm able to really accept a risk. As we talk about in our ACA support group, you lot tin can't always automatically right away go to your parents and say, "Now I know I grew upwardly in this alcoholic dwelling house, and I demand that y'all make reparation and admit what y'all did wrong." Some people don't become a chance to talk to their alcoholic parents until many years after they've gotten some recovery themselves. But I've been very fortunate to have sat down with my mother and she's a very brave woman to mind to me in some of my anger and some of my hurting and be very, very willing to hear it. And I don't think that'southward mutual, but I know it's been helpful for me.

Dr. Dobson: Joe, what would you say to your parents if you had an opportunity?

Joe: Well, to my dad, I did accept an opportunity. I had a take chances to sit with my dad on his deathbed and talk with him eye to centre. Even so, that was earlier alcoholism and the similar. But what I would say is the truth, that he hurt me an awful lot. It fabricated me very aroused and I forgive him because I know his pain. That's how I've establish forgiveness. Who am I to judge?

Dr. Dobson: Was he an adult kid of an alcoholic?

Joe: Admittedly. And he was an alcoholic besides. So I judged him for years and was real angry with him, simply what good's that practise?

Dr. Dobson: Nosotros have such empathy for a child who is deprived, driveling, hurt in this style. Simply when that child grows upward and becomes a hurting, abusing developed, then nosotros don't have empathy for him anymore. If we could have seen your father when he was a little boy, when he needed to be held.

Joe: Sure.

Dr. Dobson: When he needed someone desperately to take him in his arms and pull him up close and tell him he's of import and tell him that he's loved, and that was not there for him. In that location would exist at least an understanding of why he was unable to meet your needs.

Joe: Fifty-fifty then when my dad died, I thanked God back and then that the hurting was over for him, because I knew even then without any teaching or whatever that information technology was painful.

Chris: There'south another process to this and this is Chris as an adult dealing with a little daughter inside her. I accept hated her. I have wanted to dispose of her. I wanted to demolish her. I wanted to do the exact same things to the petty girl inside me that my parents did to her, and to go-

Dr. Dobson: Why do you lot hate her Chris?

Chris: Hated.

Dr. Dobson: That's in the past.

Chris: Yeah. That'due south in the past. Because she was then defiled and unacceptable and she was the scapegoat of the family and she was emotionally thrown out of the family when she was raped at historic period 4. I no longer became the daughter that my female parent and my father desperately needed me to be for them. I could not be me.

Dr. Dobson: I had such a marvelous relationship with my parents, especially the relationship with my male parent. I've done a lot of talking about it, and people volition write me and say, "I didn't have that. I envy that. I wish I could take had it." Y'all spend the rest of your life thinking about it if you didn't accept it, don't you?

Ann: I so longed for this loving, happy family and idea I was going to create it when I broke away from that home, when I got married and went out on my own, I was going to create that loving, happy family.

Dr. Dobson: And found yourself facing the aforementioned kind of thing. And then y'all experience cheated in that fashion, Ann?

Ann: Sometimes I do.

Dr. Dobson: Yeah, and it will be remembered for a lifetime considering in that location is that demand and it will still be there.

Chris: There are those two kinds of tears that I have. I have the tears of the things that happened to me; the abuse, and I have the tears of what didn't happen, and at present that I know some families relish and that does happen. I still believe that part of my heart'due south desire to be married is to have a little piece of that in my life.

Joe: Relative to coming together the child, myself in the past, I've done that in a fashion.

Dr. Dobson: Have you lot really, have you thought that idea before, Joe?

Joe: Absolutely. A main ingredient of recovery for an ACA is to go back, find the memories, find the pain, then that in essence, we tin can experience the healing of forgiveness and so to brainstorm to re-parent ourselves. I know that picayune child that was back and so very well today, finally.

Dr. Dobson: And what was he like Joe?

Joe: He'south a neat picayune kid. He was sad back and then, but he's a nifty little kid. He's the one that allows me to laugh. He'southward the 1 that gives me spontaneity. He's the i that allows me to honey and to play. He'southward the i that didn't get the play. And today, I take him to baseball games and things like that. I've never done that before and nor did my parents. I begged my dad to take me to baseball games. He would never do that. And today, I can have me to a baseball. Every bit simple as that might sound, that really works because I'grand learning how to beloved myself.

Dr. Dobson: In the right fashion.

Joe: Absolutely.

Dr. Dobson: Non cocky-aggrandizing.

Joe: And God taught me that. The outset time I experienced dear, existent honey, is the first time I experienced God in my life.

Dr. Dobson: Chris said that for a fourth dimension as an adult, she hated the memory of the little child inside of her. Did you lot hate-

Joe: Not consciously, but unconsciously. I mean, after all, I tried to poisonous substance him with alcohol. Think about that. Information technology was slow suicide, information technology was killing myself. What's that virtually? And so in answer to your question, aye, but I wasn't actually, actually aware of it.

Dr. Dobson: Curt, what the adult child of an alcoholic does not want to do is canteen information technology up within.

Dr. Short Grayson: That'southward absolutely correct. And I concord with Joe, I think in some ways, part of my beingness an adult at present and having come out of an alcoholic habitation, is that to parent myself better or to re-parent and take care of my little male child inside, is to sometime look at my very busy schedule and learn to say no and learn to set aside time for me to play.

Dr. Curt Grayson: At present, for me, play is playing lawn tennis, it'south playing guitar, it's playing basketball. And I have to larn how to schedule in those times to just exist this frolicsome, featherbrained lilliputian kid. Considering the rest of the time I'm too responsible.

Joe: Which is fun.

Dr. Curt Grayson: That's right.

Dr. Dobson: And fun is a expletive. Y'all tin't accept it, correct? In addition to these 13 characteristics of an ACA, there are also behaviors that are typical. The compulsive kind of behavior. Ann y'all developed an eating disorder, didn't you?

Ann: That's right. I've struggled with a weight problem at present for about nine or x years.

Dr. Dobson: Chris, you had the same state of affairs, didn't you?

Chris: Yes, I did. Aye. I turned to sugar to effort to feel better. And at once in my life I was obese.

Dr. Dobson: Well, I was not a child of an alcoholic. I've turned to sugar too, so I don't know what excuse I have. Joe, you turned to booze. All of these are ways of dealing with pain, obviously. Brusk, what are some of the other approaches to dealing with this pain within? What are some of the other compulsive behaviors?

Dr. Curt Grayson: Well, I think it's important to let people know that maybe people are feeling a lot of the emotions that we're feeling hither today and they're trying to think, "Was my father an alcoholic? Was my grandfather an alcoholic?" And maybe they're proverb no, but possibly they're still identifying very much with what we've said here today. And there are other addictions. I mean there are parents that are workaholics, they're foodaholics, exerciseaholics and various other kinds of compulsive behaviors that would, I feel, equally qualify people to be in a support group and deal with these issues. And the way I look at information technology is, annihilation that made the parent preoccupied with themselves and not with raising the child and beingness there emotionally-

Dr. Dobson: Deprived you lot in the same way.

Dr. Curt Grayson: Exactly.

Ann: When y'all were talking nearly that Brusk, it made me think that there are people out there that are going to say, "Well, my parent wasn't an alcoholic considering my parent was responsible. My parent attended work every twenty-four hours; never missed a day of work. My parent was a borough leader, my parent wasn't a sideslip row bum." And we tend to think of an alcoholic as existence somebody that'south unable to hold down a job that is unable to go along them self, physical appearance, and is constantly drinking and under the influence and may exist passed out common cold. Whereas, that is not that stereotype of what an alcoholic is.

Dr. Curt Grayson: I recall the word there that I would apply is there'southward some people that are called functional alcoholics. And what that means is merely like you're saying, Ann. As far as somebody who has a job, they are very responsible in the community, but they are all the same only as addicted to the alcohol. It could fifty-fifty be another legal medication. Some people are addicted to a Librium, Valium, various other prescriptions that their doctors freely give them without really knowing that they're addicted.

Dr. Dobson: And their children accept many of the same characteristics that we've been talking well-nigh.

Dr. Brusk Grayson: Exactly.

Roger Marsh: Well, that is a rather sobering revelation for many in our listening audience of what true alcoholic parents await similar. This has been a difficult subject that nosotros've addressed on this edition of Family Talk. But we believe that by bringing these difficult topics to the surface, meaningful healing can have place for individuals who are hurting. Over the years, we've heard from many listeners who've dealt with this exact event.

If you had or currently have an alcoholic parent in your family unit, we accept a resource for you lot. Information technology's a book past Daryl Quick called The Healing Journeying For Adult Children of Alcoholics. You lot'll find a link to this book by going to our broadcast page at drjamesdobson.org. Also, if you're looking for more practical help, you lot can connect with the American Association of Christian Counselors at aacc.net. You tin find boosted resources and search for a Christian advisor in your expanse. Once again, that'south aacc.net.

Thanks so much for joining us today. Be certain to tune in over again side by side fourth dimension for the determination of this word. We'll exist talking virtually positive steps that developed children of alcoholics tin take to farther procedure their hurt. That'due south coming upward side by side time on Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. I'yard Roger Marsh. Hope you'll join us then.

Announcer: This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Plant.

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