Children of Addicted Parents and People

When someone becomes addicted to drugs and alcohol in a family, the family can often end up spending a lot of time and energy thinking about the person and their drug and alcohol use. When this happens, it may impact on the family in a bad way.

Family members may be hurt when the addict refuses their help and care. This will often cause the family to try even harder to get the addict to recognise that they have a problem. But the harder they try, the worse it often gets.

These are just suggestions; please let COAP know is you have any other suggestions on how to take positive steps to making things better in your life.

What to do in a health emergency
If your parent passes out or has had an accident - call 999 and ask for an ambulance.

If you are preparing food, be careful with knives and hot water. If you have an accident, make sure that you seek some form of medical attention soon afterwards.

When adults are needed you could
Choose an adult (family member or friend or both) to act as a guardian (someone to look after you).

This page hopes to create more of an awareness of some roles or characters that you might be getting stuck into. It is very common for people to take on such characters, if you identify with a role or roles then don’t worry your not in the wrong. However, by reading this you might

• You are not responsible for your parents’ drug or alcohol use. It is not your fault.

• You will not be able to influence if or when they stop using without help from adult family members and services.
• It can take time for some people to say they have an alcohol or drug problem or to seek help. You do not have to wait for this to happen.
• It is important for you to feel safe, if you have somewhere safe to go, have breaks from what is happening at home.