The Effects of Alcoholics on Family

Did you know that alcohol is the most widely used and abused drug in America? Alcoholism is a primary, chronic disease with genetic, psychosocial and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations. This disease is often progressive and fatal. Alcoholic characteristics include continuous or periodic impaired control over drinking, preoccupation with the drug alcohol, use of alcohol despite adverse consequences, and distortions in thinking, most notably denial. There are four major types of Alcoholic families.

Type One

This type is riddled with active alcoholism that includes children, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. Active alcoholism will be a part of every generation of the type one family.

Type Two

In this family system the active drinking member of the family has stopped drinking. The active alcoholism has been arrested, but the family system will continue to operate in an alcoholic way. Many type two families feel a great deal of conflict.

Type Three

The active drinking has been removed from the family for one or more generations. In this system, the parents did not drink in an alcoholic way, but one of their parents or grandparents was an alcoholic. Although drinking has not been in the family for some time the family still carries the characteristics of an alcoholic family.

Type Four

In this nonalcoholic family one of its members becomes an alcoholic. The family then becomes part of the alcoholic system. The children of this family will be at high risk of becoming alcoholics. As the disease of alcoholism progresses in the alcoholic member, the family becomes more and more dysfunctional in its attempts to deal with the alcoholic behavior.
Ashley's Family System