Stanton Peele, in the “Addiction Experience” describes addiction as “a lifestyle, a way of coping with the world and ourselves, a way of interpreting our experience.” Don Wegscheider, in “If Only My Family Understood Me”, defines addiction as, “a progressive focusing of all attention on a target – an activity which preempts the expression of one’s feelings”. While it is commonly accepted that addiction to alcohol and drugs exists, it is less commonly understood that the person involved in a primary love relationship with one addicted frequently displays symptoms of addiction him/herself in the ways that he/she relates to the relationship. This article will attempt to make this relationship clear and to help co-dependents define their own symptoms and clarify means by which they can establish their own recovery programs. (Note: For purposes of this article, the alcoholic will be referred to as “he”, the codependent as “she” or “spouse”.)
In order to parallel the symptomatology of co-dependent addiction to alcohol and drug addiction, it is important to review the symptoms of addiction. An alcoholic becomes increasingly preoccupied with getting and using alcohol to the degree that his lifestyle is centered around its use. He protects his supply, and in so doing, compromises and breaks his value systems resulting in guilt, self-hatred, and loss of self-esteem. He drinks or uses more, needing more of his chemical to gain relief, achieving an increasingly higher tolerance. Meanwhile, his major life areas are spiraling downward (e.g., family relationships, friends, job, health, finances), despite his insistence that he has no problem with alcohol or drugs. He continues to deny his loss of control despite increasing evidence to the contrary. He continues to seek the old “highs”, but gradually loses the ability to feel the euphoria of earlier days, now drinking or using in an attempt to feel normal. When the addiction process is “broken”, usually by some form of crisis, the addict often experiences physical signs of withdrawal, as well as emotional withdrawal, similar to the grief process experienced as a result of the loss of a loved one.
As the alcoholic becomes increasingly preoccupied with getting, using, and keeping alcohol, the “developing co-dependent” becomes more focused on that person, his behavior and his chemical use, and begins to change her own behavior in response to the alcoholic’s lifestyle. Behavior changes may include efforts to check on or control the drinking or drinking-related friends or activities (“protecting her supply”), peacekeeping within the family system, isolation from activities outside the family, basically adding up to focusing on the drinker himself (the definition of addiction), and a lifestyle centered around him.
As the alcoholic loses control of the amounts and frequency of his drinking, the co-dependent naturally loses more control of the drinker and his behavior, and as the alcoholic’s tolerance for alcohol increases, the co-dependent hangs on more compulsively to her defenses, however unconscious, designed to control the drinker and his responses. Therefore she too, is in essence building an “increase in tolerance” to unacceptable behavior from the drinker (one characteristic of enabling), and losing control not only of the drinker’s responses, but her own emotions, moodswings and reactions. In response to the deterioration of this primary relationship and the alcoholic’s denial that his drinking and behavior is a problem, she begins to accept projected blame and questions her own self-worth and adequacy. In essence, she gives the alcoholic the power to determine her reactions, feelings, moods, much as the alcoholic does his alcohol. She builds defenses for surviving in the relationship and the family system, and for protecting herself from the pain (e.g., repression, taking responsibility for others, acting happy and “all together”, self-righteousness). As she gains temporary relief from use of these defenses (like the alcoholic gains relief from drinking), she uses them even more frequently and habitually, though usually unconsciously. So as the alcoholic numbs his painful feelings with alcohol and other defenses (e.g., projection, blaming, aggressive behavior), the co-dependent also anesthetizes her pain with natural defenses in a progressively numbing process. As her addiction progresses, she too, is in denial that she is an affected by the drinking lifestyle as he. More often, her concern is for the drinker or the effects she sees on her children. Even then, her picture of reality is often distorted and minimized.
As the co-dependent’s needs are met less frequently or in less healthy ways, she often compromises her value system (as the drinker does in efforts to obtain and protect his chemical, his declining self image, or in his states of intoxication and lowered inhibitions). In her case, she may have an affair; she may abuse or neglect her children; she may abandon spiritual beliefs, or she may lie about her own activities or his behavior outside the immediate family, all of which contribute to her own self-hatred and loss of self-respect.
As her addiction progresses, her major life areas decline, as do the drinker’s. Her first are affected is emotional, with increasing self-doubts, feelings blunted with defenses and grief over the loss of a love relationship to name a few; closely related is often a change in sexual response. She is usually affected socially, often isolating herself from old friends and activities, due to loss of interest, attempts to avoid anticipated disapproval or desire to keep and eye on the drinker. Her family is affected, her children often becoming protective and caretaking of her needs or resentful of her controlling, overprotectiveness and dominance, though often they are unaware of or do not talk about these effects. Her spiritual often suffers, resulting in her feeling abandoned by or non-deserving of God. Physically, she often experiences stress-related problems such as chronic headaches, backaches, or gastrointestinal disorders. These can impact on her job performance through loss of efficiency, frequent absences or hospitalizations. Or her job functions may take the other extreme of workaholism which may be a form of withdrawing from the home situation and gaining self-esteem through work achievement. Another area affecting both the alcoholic and the co-dependent spouse is the loss of violation. As the drinker loses the power of choice over his consumption of alcohol and resulting behaviors, the co-dependent loses the ability to see her options or to take action on them. Therefore, she feels trapped in the “victim’s role”, unable to see her own enabling behaviors or the power she is giving up.
As these symptoms of addiction progress, often she begins to plan her escape. This may take the form of hoarding money, saving for the day when children leave home, or it may take the form of separation, divorce, or even suicide. When an actual breakup in the relationship occurs, the co-dependent spouse experiences a form of withdrawal, often losing her appetite, becoming restless or lethargic, having difficulty sleeping, and experiencing feelings of disorientation. Often the breakup is short-lived, despite no real resolution of differences, similar to the alcoholic’s drinking to ward off withdrawal. Often there is a “hanging-on” to the relationship despite no conscious gains for the co-dependent or no realistic basis for the hope or change; perhaps this parallels the alcoholic’s continuing to drink in an effort to “regain the old highs”.
It is an often-noted phenomenon that the alcoholic becomes addicted to other things (gambling, workaholism, etc.), even after sobriety. The co-dependent, too, often develops addiction in other areas, such as compulsive eating, spending and, not infrequently, becomes alcoholic or drug dependent (commonly on prescribed tranquilizers), herself. Though she may ultimately sever her ties to this alcoholic marriage, she is likely to become involved with another alcoholic or addictive relationship, carry her own addictive symptoms into new relationships, as well as her child rearing practices, perpetuating the cycle further into new generations.
A co-dependent, like an alcoholic, denies her own addictive symptoms. Her denial often takes the form of thinking that once she breaks off from the alcoholic relationship she will be fine. She fails to see how she carries her addictive thinking, responses and behaviors into other areas of her life, and denies the need for her own treatment.
The first step of recovery must be to help her break through her own denial and to become aware of the compulsiveness of her own defenses. Overcoming addiction is as much building positive involvements in one’s environment as it is withdrawing from addictive attachments.