Recovering Couples

There have been many studies over the years on the impact of alcoholism on couples and on families, but nobody had ever asked the question: What is normal in family recovery processes? That changed in 1989 when Stephanie Brown, Ph.D. and Virginia Lewis, Ph.D. joined forces as founders and Co-Directors of the Family Recovery Project. Sponsored by the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, the Family Recovery Project was the first research project to study recovery processes in the family with varying lengths of recovery time, asking the question: What is normal?

Drs. Brown and Lewis studied families with varying lengths of recovery ranging from two months to 18 years, interviewing and videotaping the 52 volunteer families who also filled out a number of paper and pencil tests. What did they find out? The following is a brief overview:

1. Moving from active addiction to recovery often comes on the heals of a lot of instability in the family - which preceeds change. The old family system needs to collapse; letting go of old ways of functioning allows for a new life, not regaining the old one
2. Recovery is a long-term, multileveled process effecting individual development, family development, and the family environment - it is more than simply not drinking
3. Recovery is a huge transition for families in that so many changes take place, this usually means learning how to adjust and cope with a new set of problems and challenges 
4. Recovery is a long-term process with different developmental issues associated with transitioning from active alcoholism to early recovery, and to long-term recovery 
5. Finally, Brown & Lewis emphasize the importance for families to get help, reaching outside of the family to learn new ways of relating, of caring for self and incorporating recovery into individual and family life

What Brown and Lewis emphasize is that a lot of the difficulties couples and families experience in alcoholism recovery is normal! While It is painful when denial starts to crack around the reality of one’s addiciton or around the partner’s addiction, awareness of the realities of alcoholism creates an opening for change. Since individual and family development tends to come to a screetching halt in active addiction, recovery is the process to move forward again: focusing on one’s own needs, redefining relationships, learning to manage feelings, and creating new ways of dealing with the eveyday responsibiliites of life.   This is a lot of change, but as one person recently told me, “Recovery is hard, but it is better than being numb, I want to live life, not hide from it.” 

My doctoral dissertation was based on a separate component of the Family Recovery Project, the “Couples Focus Group”. In that research effort, the question was: What leads to successful couple recovery? I have continued this research as a Research Associate at Mental Research Institute and as Co-Founder with Dr. Lewis of Center for Couples In Recovery. Next time I will review my research findings on what I found out.   As always, questions and comments are welcome.