Unfortunately, the association between alcohol and relationships is often detrimental. Alcohol abuse is a real problem that can negatively affect marriages, romantic relationships, families and drive wedges between individuals. People who depend on alcohol commit actions such as misuse of finances, ignoring the children, causing physical fights, threatening the happiness and health of those around them, and inevitably affecting those relationships. Las Vegas Recovery Center offers programs that serve to heal and repair these relationships by addressing alcohol dependency.
The Abuse of Alcohol and Relationships
Alcohol can cause deterioration of relationships through various ways such as:
- Sex: Alcohol is well known to significantly lower testosterone in men, necessary for arousal and libido. Consequently, this leads to reduced frequency of intimacy through sex and negatively affects both parties’ sex quality.
- Increased unreliability and irresponsibility: With increased alcohol consumption and development of dependency, individuals begin to fail to observe their responsibility, which reduces their partner’s confidence in their dependency.
- Physical health problems: Prolonged and heavy alcohol abuse can undoubtedly impact the individual’s health, which affects the quality of life for the family and both partners. For example, it increases the risk of several cancers, affects digestion and weight.
- Infidelity and legal problems: Alcohol leads to impairment, thereby poor decision making such as cheating, driving while drunk, violence, and other illegal behaviors.
- Financial implications: Alcohol costs money, and while intoxicated, you are more likely to make poor purchase choices. Additionally, work productivity suffers from alcohol dependency. Issues such as absenteeism or underperformance could lead to loss of work.
Ways Alcohol Affects Family Relationships
The need for family therapy is on the rise due to the broken homes resulting from alcohol abuse. Therapy helps educate the parties involved regarding alcohol and relationships and the best ways to mitigate issues that arise from alcohol dependency. Some of the negative impacts include:
- Emotional distress: Children growing up in homes whereby a parent is alcohol dependent often experience neglect, physical, emotional, or mental abuse and miss out on vital emotional needs.
- Divorce and separation: Cases whereby one or both partners suffer from alcohol dependency and do not seek help through rehab and family therapy often result in divorce or separation that often adversely affects the children and may even influence their drinking habits in the future.
- Cyclic patterns: Children of alcoholics are often more likely to develop an alcohol problem or marry someone with an alcohol problem perpetuating the problem.
- Lack of systems and structures: Alcoholism often disrupts systems and routines such as mealtimes and bedtimes, essential for child development.
Treatment Options for Alcohol Dependency
Alcohol addiction treatments include individual counseling, group counseling, family therapy, self-help meetings, and support groups such as Alcohol Anonymous. In some cases, the affected individual may not want to receive treatment, in which case, there are treatment programs engineered to help the family members and partners.
Untreated alcohol abuse negatively affects relationships between partners, family members, children, and individually. Romantic partners may experience emotional detachment and loss of interest, negatively affecting their interaction. Seeking treatment can help prevent strain, separation, or divorce in marriages. Alcohol abuse also negatively affects children making them more prone to experience similar drinking issues or move into similar relationships.
Addiction Treatment at Las Vegas Recovery Center
At Las Vegas Recovery Center, we offer recovery programs and various therapies that help you, your partner, and family members understand the abuse of alcohol and relationships, its effects, and how best to treat the illness. A combination of family therapy supervised detox, alcohol treatment, and marital counseling can help you save your relationships. Contact Las Vegas Recovery Center at 844.332.2076 and get help for you and your loved one.
At Las Vegas Recovery Center (LVRC), we are deeply committed to our clients’ recovery from substance use disorder. As a nationally recognized provider, our philosophy is grounded in clinical excellence and customer service, and our primary purpose is to facilitate recovery for our clients. We give individuals the support they need to overcome dependency due to chronic pain management as well as drugs and alcohol.