The Family Research Project: A Summary

by Stephanie Brown

In This Article…

Sometimes a new idea offers such a radically different lens that it challenges conventional wisdom and even turns standard theory and practice upside down. Children of alcoholics (COA's) and adult children of alcoholics (ACOA's) were new ideas of this kind. We believe that our Family Recovery Research extends this revolutionary perspective. Since 1989, we (Stephanie Brown and Virginia Lewis) have been asking the question: Is there a "normal" developmental process of recovery for the family, similar to the long-term process of change that has been identified for the alcoholic and for children of alcoholics? What happens over time when one or both parents stop drinking? Are there predictable, defined stages? What is the impact of abstinence on the family and on the individuals within?

I have often asked over the years, "Why do people resist looking at recovery? Why does the focus of research and treatment remain fixed on the drinking alcoholic?" While so much effort has been targeted toward a "goal" of abstinence, the focus has always stopped at that point, as if everything is expected to turn out well once the drinking stops. It is not so simple. Abstinence marks a positive beginning rather than an end. Recovery is a difficult, painful process of radical change that is never easy and rarely smooth for anyone involved. Without knowledge about what to expect, including the paradox that what is normal and necessary to long-term positive change is also disruptive and even traumatic in the short run, the impact of such turmoil can cause further damage. Over the last six years, we have interviewed and tested 52 couples and families (those who were together for a least five years during drinking and who are still together in recovery), with sobriety ranging from a few months to over 18 years, in order to discover what recovery is like. We have examined the process of change according to length of sobriety within three domains: the environment, the system, and the individuals within.

Research Findings

• The four stages of recovery already defined for the individual hold true for the family: Drinking; Transition, the move from drinking to abstinence; Early Recovery, the stabilization of abstinence with new learning, much uncertainty and constant change; and Ongoing Recovery, when massive change has been consolidated and the family is guided by the organizing behaviors, values and beliefs of recovery.

• The environment, or context, of the drinking family is traumatic and harmful to children and adults. It remains unsafe and potentially out of control into Early Recovery, which may last as long as three to five years. In Ongoing Recovery, the environment is safe and not thrown off track by the difficulties and crises of "normal" life. One family looks back:

In the first year, we lived on pins and needles. There was more tension than there was during the drinking because no one knew what to expect. Before, the drinking was known; it was predictable. Now, our nerves were raw and ragged. We all feared an explosion. It took years before we felt calm and secure.

• The unhealthy drinking family system must collapse as the family enters recovery, permitting attention to shift from the system to the individuals. Many families do not accomplish this collapse or they do not survive it. Because there is so much disruption with abstinence, and so much turmoil caused by the collapse of the system, many families break up, seeing that things have gotten worse, not better. Our data explain how outside support networks (12-step programs, treatment centers, therapists) provide a "holding environment" for all members of the family, a cushion and substitute for the drinking family system that has collapsed. Families utilize these outside supports to weather the difficult changes of the first three to five years. It may be five to ten years before a stable, strong sense of healthy family is secure. Change like this does not occur from inside the family in the vacuum created by abstinence. It requires external guidance and supports. Yet conventional treatment wisdom often leans in the opposite direction: much of family therapy is aimed at bringing individuals together, to focus on a "we." Our work demonstrates the importance of an individual focus during the early period. Another family remembers:

In early recovery we could begin to talk about an "I" and a "you." We didn't dare try to communicate as a "we." For the first two years, we didn't talk to each other without first calling our sponsors and we didn't talk about important things for at least five years. We led parallel lives and slowly got to know each other again.

• The process of individual recovery takes years, not days or months, and can enable lasting, in-depth changes in the family. Unfortunately, there is sometimes an unrecognized dark side: children may be neglected as parents focus exclusively on their individual recoveries and abdicate parenting responsibilities. One parent told us:

Early recovery was a self-obsessed time for us. Our children had a "recovering Dad" and a "recovering Mom," but who was taking care of them? No one. I will be forever grateful for sobriety, but I have a profound regret that we abandoned our children in the service of our own recoveries.

The Trauma of Recovery

Data on the process of family recovery shocks us with mixed news: Yes, recovery is positive; the end of the drinking is extremely important and lays the necessary foundation for in-depth change. But that process of change, which we have called the "trauma of recovery," is difficult. Families may not survive it, and without sufficient knowledge or supports, children may suffer unknown and unintended consequences of this time of uncertainty, instability and radical change.

No wonder there is resistance to focusing on recovery.

It is hard to see what's really there and what is normal. In our culture we idealize short-term cures, "symptom reduction" and magic answers, refusing to understand or accept that solutions to massive problems require difficult, painful choices and a long time in the process of change.

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