The+People+Who+are+Affected+by+a+Drug+Addiction

Michaela D'Onofrio: 3/18/12
 * Drug Addiction Hurts Your Family Comment: Drugs can split up your family and make you less close to them. When you are on drugs you can’t control your emotions, which causes you to yell. This could upset the people around the addict and cause them to feel extremely hurt. **
 * You may think that since you keep away from your family, your not causing any trouble. in fact, you may believe you’re saving them a lot of frustrations and problems. Most of the time you just fight anyway, so staying away has helped. **
 * But what would happen if you were using drugs anymore? Would you have the same kind of fights? Could your relationships be better? How much do you think they worry about you when they don’t hear from you for months? **
 * Not all families are ready for the kind of honesty sobriety required. But in many are. If you got sober, you may start a chain- reaction of positive change in your family you may never have dreamt possible. **
 * Drug Addiction Hurts The Community Every person who is on drugs contributes to the problem, because they keep the dealer in business, making the community an unsafe place. **
 * Do you recall why you keep such a low profile from the police? because you’ve been seen around too many people long rap sheets. you may think you are returning anyone because you don’t pull a knife or shoot a gun. But if you are part of the drug addiction culture in a community, you help to keep it going. **
 * As long as you keep drug dealers and business, they can continue feeling of the people in the community. When you crash at your drug using friends houses, you keep that neighborhood unsafe and unsettled.  The police use valuable time and resources to track down people causing drug related crimes. Even though you don’t see a victim, your drug addiction activity  contributes to the bigger problem in your community. **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Drug Addiction Hurts You <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline;">A person who is addicted to drugs basically throws their lives away. They give up the potential to be a good person and end up with more health risks and a shorter life. **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">You have probably excused it, rationalized it, minimized it, reinterpreted it, and flat-out ignored it. But none of that erases the truth. <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Drug addiction hurts you. Your body can only take so much, and your mind can only take so much. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> When you learn how to live a drug addiction lifestyle, you give up on the more uplifting parts of you. **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Your ability to be generous, your ability to help others in their lives, your ability to make a lasting contribution in your community, your potential and your natural gifts – all of these are squandered when you continue your drug addiction. **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Your very existence is at risk. Drug addiction does all kinds of damage to your body, i <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">ncreasing your risk of heart disease, liver disease, breathing problems, and death from an overdose. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> After all this, do you really believe that your drug addiction isn’t hurting you? **

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 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Drug Addiction Hurts Everyone Involved **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Drug addiction hurts so many more people than you may realize. <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Your family, your community, and your own life are at stake when you allow your drug addiction to continue. Getting sober takes courage, but it’s worth it. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> If you need help getting started with drug rehab, call today for more information. **


 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Drug Addiction Hurts Your Family <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline;">Comment: Drugs can split up your family and make you less close to them. When you are on drugs you can’t control your emotions, which causes you to yell. This could upset the people around the addict and cause them to feel extremely hurt. **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">You may think that since you keep away from your family, your not causing any trouble. in fact, you may believe you’re saving them a lot of frustrations and problems. Most of the time you just fight anyway, so staying away has helped. **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">But what would happen if you were using drugs anymore? Would you have the same kind of fights? <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Could your relationships be better? <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">How much do you think they worry about you when they don’t hear from you for months? **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Not all families are ready for the kind of honesty sobriety required. But in many are. <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you got sober, you may start a chain- reaction of positive change in your family you may never have dreamt possible. **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Drug Addiction Hurts The Community <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline;">Every person who is on drugs contributes to the problem, because they keep the dealer in business, making the community an unsafe place. **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do you recall why you keep such a low profile from the police? because you’ve been seen around too many people long rap sheets. you may think you are returning anyone because you don’t pull a knife or shoot a gun. <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">But if you are part of the drug addiction culture in a community, you help to keep it going. **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">As long as you keep drug dealers and business, they can continue feeling of the people in the community. <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">When you crash at your drug using friends houses, you keep that neighborhood unsafe and unsettled. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> The police use valuable time and resources to track down people causing drug related crimes. Even though you don’t see a victim, your drug addiction activity <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> contributes to the bigger problem in your community. **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Drug Addiction Hurts You <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline;">A person who is addicted to drugs basically throws their lives away. They give up the potential to be a good person and end up with more health risks and a shorter life. **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">You have probably excused it, rationalized it, minimized it, reinterpreted it, and flat-out ignored it. But none of that erases the truth. <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Drug addiction hurts you. Your body can only take so much, and your mind can only take so much. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> When you learn how to live a drug addiction lifestyle, you give up on the more uplifting parts of you. **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Your ability to be generous, your ability to help others in their lives, your ability to make a lasting contribution in your community, your potential and your natural gifts – all of these are squandered when you continue your drug addiction. **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Your very existence is at risk. Drug addiction does all kinds of damage to your body, i <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">ncreasing your risk of heart disease, liver disease, breathing problems, and death from an overdose. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> After all this, do you really believe that your drug addiction isn’t hurting you? **


 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Drug Addiction Hurts Everyone Involved **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Drug addiction hurts so many more people than you may realize. <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Your family, your community, and your own life are at stake when you allow your drug addiction to continue. Getting sober takes courage, but it’s worth it. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #5d5a50; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> If you need help getting started with drug rehab, call today for more information. **

**<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #262626; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">The impact of problem drug use on the family **

 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">"It's like a hell, a real living hell." (Parent) **


 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #474747; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">The problematic use of drugs by a family member had <span style="background-color: #d5a6bd; color: #474747; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">many significant and enduring impacts on family dynamics and functioning. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #474747; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Families routinely reported great stress, <span style="background-color: #d5a6bd; color: #474747; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">conflict and anxiety as a consequence of trying to protect the family member from the dangers and harms associated with drugs, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #474747; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> and to limit the damage arising from their behaviour towards the rest of the family. Parents and their children reported bitter and often destructive disagreement over how best to respond to the child with the drug problem. <span style="background-color: #d5a6bd; color: #474747; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">The ongoing push and pull between whether to help, to what extent and in what ways created a great deal of stress among family members. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #474747; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> All the elements of family trauma are illustrated in this father's depiction of family life once two of his sons developed drug problems: **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #474747; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">The tendency for the family member's drug problem to take centre stage drained parental time and energy, <span style="background-color: #d5a6bd; color: #474747; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">resulting in an imbalance in the attention and resources available for their other children. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #474747; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> The interviews with younger brothers and sisters confirmed this. And while they might empathise, they were also aware of the costs to themselves. **
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 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">(a section of the whole article) 3/25/12 Michaela D'Onofrio **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">comment: **
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">When someone is on drugs in a home, they not only affect themselves, but everyone around them. They can hurt the people that care about them and that they care about most. **