By: Patricia O’Gorman, PhD

We keep hearing about a national mental health crisis, as well as an alcohol and addiction crisis. Perhaps it’s time to respond to them together. Increasingly, Americans are self-medicating their pandemic-lingering loneliness, anxiety, and depression, and it is fueling our addiction epidemic. The costs are pervasive and tragic.

But who is paying a hidden price for caring about someone suffering from addiction?

It is family and friends to whom the burden to call 911 falls to get emergency life-saving help in an overdose. It is the romantic partner who contacts their spouse's employer to say they’re ill today so that they do not lose their job. It is the grandmother who prays for them, the sibling who makes excuses when their brother or sister cannot complete the plan they were so proud to have developed. There is a whole community of people who grieve when the person they cherish is slipping away.

Those who love someone with an addiction are the silent suffering parties whom I refer to Al-Anon, support groups specifically for those with a loved one with an addiction. Here in this 24/7 program of international mutual support, they can receive acceptance and support from those who have been there.

Someone else's addiction can negatively affect a person in different ways across their lifetime, depending on who is addicted and when the addiction starts.

Having a parent with addiction, for example, tends to be confusing and frightening for young children. Patterns of behavior often found in these families include the unpredictable responses of a parent, which can vary from punishing a behavior one time, ignoring it the........

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