Episode 95 -- March 11, 2021

Family Traits: Discovering the Origin of Our Addictions

There is no secret about how certain traits are passed down through generations. However, our DNA goes far beyond the color of our eyes or whether we have a widow's peak. In this excerpt, we dive into how family history is related to our addictions and co-occurring disorders.

Unwelcome Inheritance, by Lisa Woititz with material from her mother, Dr. Janet Woititz, discusses and analyzes Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACoA). This excerpt shares the story of Jackie and how she came to terms with her addiction and ancestral past. We are reminded that, although addiction can be inherited, we can break the cycle. We learn the importance of knowing our relatives' health histories, and how making these connections can be beneficial in our own recovery.

It has been edited for brevity.

Learning from Our Family History

When we Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACoA) look at the tapestry that is our family history, we discover that there's so much more than meets the eye. While we cannot change that history, the good news is that we can obtain skills and learn new ways of behaving and thinking that can change things for the better when it comes to ourselves and our children and their children. And the tools we gain for healthy living can be used in many areas.

Understanding all the elements that are woven into the tapestry of my family helps when I fall back to wondering why I sometimes feel like such a basket case. I am the adult child of an alcoholic with my own addiction issues and life-threatening food allergies. My father's family perished in the Holocaust. (We don't know if alcoholism ran in his family or not.) My mother was codependent. On her side of the family, there are sugar and alcohol addictions and depression. Her father grew up in an orphanage, and several family members were Holocaust survivors. My first husband was from a profoundly religious family, and the impact of that on our children and me could be a whole other book. And, of course, there are all the issues surrounding my own parenting and the impact all of this has had on my children, plus the body chemistry they have inherited from both sides of their family. I hope that when you look at all that is woven into your own family history, you will gain new insight and hope for the future.

So often mental health issues and substance abuse problems occur together. Sometimes one causes the other; other times both problems exist regardless of the other. In either case, Mom thought the best way to get a proper psychiatric diagnosis was to abstain from substances for a length of time so that alcohol or drugs are not impacting mental health problems. Because both problems can be inherited, just like many other diseases or medical problems, it's important to know our family's medical, mental health, and addiction history.

It's also important to remember that while alcoholism is a disease, being the child of an alcoholic is not. Dr. Jan said that while some children of alcoholics may need therapy in order to work through serious childhood traumas, the children of alcoholics she saw were essentially healthy in body, mind, and spirit. She also stressed that resolving childhood issues is a normal part of most people's life experience, whether or not they are an adult child of an alcoholic or drug addict.

As my friend Jackie can attest, sifting through the sands of a family's history with addiction can expand the view we have of ourselves and give us a brand-new perspective on how we view the world beyond self.

Jackie's Story

Even though she has been sober for four years, my friend Jackie calls herself "a garden variety alcoholic." If you knew her, she would tell you that she did not drink to numb her feelings or to avoid problems. She fell in love with alcohol during her years working as a bartender. She simply loved to drink and was not able to stop herself once she started. In fact, she acquired four DWIs after the age of thirty, and she is no longer allowed to drive. Following in his mother's footsteps, Jackie's son became addicted to heroin during high school and has been through treatment more than once.

Life became very difficult for Jackie. After a bitter divorce, she relapsed after two years of sobriety and was again arrested for driving while intoxicated. When court officials found out that her son had a drug problem, they made him leave her home. It was devastating for both Jackie and her son. Jackie judges herself harshly for being an alcoholic and especially for the relapse that made her situation so much worse. She says it put her in a position where her son was hurt, and that pains her deeply.

Jackie was raised in a loving and stable household where her parents never drank, and out of the four children in her family, she is the only one who developed a problem with alcohol. I asked her about her grandparents, and at first she said that they were totally normal; she thought she was just a freak of nature. But upon deeper reflection, Jackie began to remember incidents when one grandparent on each side of her family drank to the point of oblivion. She remembers how her grandfather on her father's side would often not wake up for holiday dinners because he had passed out drunk in his recliner. And she recalled how her grandmother on her mother's side became the life of the party after a few cocktails—which happened often.

Jackie asked her mother if her memory was correct, and her mother confirmed that it was. In fact, her mother told her that both of Jackie's grandparents on her mother's side were "big drinkers." Because her father's father simply fell asleep when he had too much to drink, no one thought that he had a problem. And because her mother's parents were so lively and fun, nobody considered them to be problem drinkers either. Jackie asked her mother how growing up with alcoholic parents had affected her. Her mother said that when she was growing up, her parents fought a lot and that she became afraid when they argued. She said that she felt embarrassed when they got drunk around other people and that she always watched what she said because she didn't want to anger either one of her parents.

Under this new lens, Jackie began to realize that three of her grandparents were probably alcoholics, which would make both her parents adult children of alcoholics, and that she and her son more than likely inherited the addictive body chemistry that runs in her family. Because her parents grew up in an environment where alcohol abuse was common, they made sure that their home was a peaceful and happy place. They avoided alcohol because the way their parents drank turned them off. So alcoholism seemed to skip her parents' generation, which is why Jackie did not realize that this disease ran in her family.

Having a wider view of herself as part of a family history has helped Jackie forgive herself for not being able to resist the compulsion to drink. She understands that it is part of her brain and body chemistry and not a lack of morality or character, which she says helps when she slips into blaming herself too harshly for her son's addiction. And she also understands why it has been so difficult for her to confront the fact that her son had a serious drug problem. She learned from her parents that "everything was fine" even when it wasn't, and she also learned to avoid confrontation, which is why Jackie did not acknowledge that her son was in trouble when he began using and abusing drugs.

• Think for a moment about your own family. Who is in it, and how are they related to you genetically or emotionally?
• How has alcoholism or other drug addiction affected each of the members in your family?

About the Author:
From her preteen through adult years, Lisa Woititz worked closely with her mother, Dr. Janet Geringer Woititz, at Dr. Woititz's Institute for Counseling and Training, and took over managerial responsibilities at the institute after her mother's death in 1994. She has worked in the mental health, substance abuse, and criminal justice fields all of her professional life. She is a trained substance abuse counselor and crisis counselor, and she has served as a volunteer for NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) for the families of persons suffering with mental illness. As a probation officer and peace officer, she supervised youth at high risk of incarceration, many of whom were the children of alcoholics, and conducted presentence investigations on adult criminal matters for the local courts.

© 2015 by Lisa Sue Woititz
All rights reserved. Published 2015.