When addiction grips one member of the family, no one is left unaffected. Whether it is patterns of codependency observed in a spouse, predictable roles assumed by children, or the burden of child-rearing placed on grandparents, patterns of addictive behavior are insidious, and often leave only chaos in their wake.

Addiction treatment over the past 100 years has come a long way. Especially when considering people who struggled with alcohol and drugs were reduced to terms like, “sinners”, “junkies”, and “drunks,” and at best found help in the form of spiritual direction. Not that people didn’t experience change, some did. But culturally, addiction was crammed into the dark spaces of stigma and misunderstanding, leaving those who struggled with very limited options for help.