Adult Children of Alcoholics Counseling Session
This counseling session took place in St Paul’s Catholic Church Hall West Philadelphia from 10.00 am to 1.00 pm. In attendance is a group of 300 young adults of the age bracket between 14 up to 25 years and, had personal interaction with two adolescents with severe alcoholism related problems.Adult Children of Alcoholics Counseling Session
This program aims at this age group since it is the most vulnerable to the problems of alcoholism. The session main is to enlighten young adults on how to deal with this problem. This session tries to counsel the young adults on how to react to the problems that they face as this vice affects everyone in the family.
Alcoholism has a number of impacts, which often lead to the destruction of family units. It is a wide spread habit in the society. Parents and caregivers, addicted to alcohol, mainly fail to provide proper guidelines to their children. Children are mostly at school and, parents assume that teachers will take the responsibility of guiding the children. Instead addicted parents occupy themselves in alcohol and, neglect extremely crucial parental roles.
Counseling session provides young adults with skills that help them deal with alcoholism problems. The age bracket of 14 up to 25 years is a period of self-discovery so is it more vulnerable to engage in alcoholism. Hence, young adults-parents communication plays a crucial role in discovering oneself.
Alcoholism is an extremely serious problem that leads to health problems with liver, brain, other organs, and causes social problems like increase in crime rate and, eventually, an early death. Alcoholism is a difficult habit to stop as it makes the victim more aggressive in order to obtain the substance.Adult Children of Alcoholics Counseling Session
As a counselor, verbal interview is crucial to have with the client so as to establish the problem and its remedies.
- Counselor: Is drinking a serious problem? Why? Why not?
Client 1: Yes, because I come from an alcoholic home and there is no peace at home.
Client 2: Yes, because it is a vice that has spread even to the young youths thus, making them not to concentrate at school.
- Counselor: Does your school have an alcohol policy? If yes, is it enforced?
Client 1: Yes. There are penalties to face when the students break the rule.
Client 2: Yes. There are penalties in practice thus; many students have become addicts to alcohol.
- Counselor: Does your parents have this problem?
Client 1: Yes and, they both take alcohol and have no or little time for me.Adult Children of Alcoholics Counseling Session
Client 2: Yes. My father takes alcohol.
- Counselor: Does this affect your school performance? If yes how?
Client 1: yes. It affects my studies in that no one is available to help in my homework. At times, they use all the money to take alcohol making the whole family go without food and also lack school fees.
Client 2: Yes. My father takes alcohol, and when he returns home he beats my mothers and sends her away for some days. This leaves me with no one to take care of me and, this makes me lack concentration at school.
- Counselor: Does this affect your relationship with your parents? If yes how?
Client1: Yes it does. There is no love at home and, this makes me go to my friend’s place where we do smoke cigarettes to console the lonely life.
Client2: Yes it does. I recent my father as he mistreats my mother and, this causes the presences of the motherly love.
- Counselor: There are many implications that alcohol brings to the family and most of the young people are facing this problem. Therefore, there is no despair in life be strong. Help your parents to cab this behavior. There are four stages of addiction development with different characteristics.
The first is the experimentation stage where the victim starts trying to consume alcohol in order to explore the effects and fulfill their curiosity about it. Alcohol temporarily relives anxiety of the victim. For example, if a man finds his wife cheating he turns to be an alcoholic to suppress the stress and forget his problems. This makes him to feel relievedonly when he is under the influence of alcohol. As time passes, it feels fantastic to use it and the victim moves to the next stage.Adult Children of Alcoholics Counseling Session
The second is regular use stage as the victim starts liking alcohol and takes it more frequently in order to experience more satisfaction. They normally suffer hangovers due to the lack of substance. The victims experience headaches, which they cure with taking an additional dose of alcohol. This makes them start having problems related with others members of either home, school or at the work place as, they start neglecting their duties at the work place or homes. This moves them to the most dangerous stage where one does irrational actions that ruin their lives forever.
The third is the risky behavior stage and the extremely dangerous stage in life direction as the victim indulges in dangerous habits due to alcoholism. They undertake extraordinarily daring moves without taking into consideration the consequences. The victims can engage in unsafe sex practices that expose them to the risk of getting H.I.V infection. Drive while dead drunk without any caution and fear for their lives or jump from a high point of a story building ending up to die or to become a cripple for life.
The final is the dependence and addiction stage which is fatal where the addict can hardly perform unless they are under the influence of alcohol. The person deteriorates drastically in many aspects like health, social, and financial aspects since alcohol has taken the first priority in their lives. If the victims continue using alcohol, they display violence and other irrational behavior.
Recommendations
Children should be truly understanding and patient to their parents. They should also explain to their parents the dangers that this habit cares to one’s life. Program puts an emphasis on the need of victims to have patience and expects some withdrawal symptoms. However, they should not discourage the parent, but should take a part in the healing process.
Children should always remain supportive to their parents. It is necessary to have an understanding of the addict behavior and show love, provide with care, and understanding. This will speed up the healing process and encourages the addict to quit the habit.Adult Children of Alcoholics Counseling Session
The counseling session helps advocates the victim to confide to the mentor who will act as a friend and a confidant during the process. The mentor can be a person with the same problem or an influential, or understanding mature person who has a reputable experience in assisting cases of alcoholism.
Success of the counseling sessions
The program has been successful in providing moral and emotional support to this vulnerable group. Number of victims who join the group have benefited from a free counseling. Many young people are truly appreciative of the program as it helps them to lead their parents to a better life. The young adults also counsel their parents and some of them have quit the habit. By the end of program, the youngsters felt their ability to fix their parents, make a real, alcohol-free family with them.
Failures of the session
Young adults get pressure from the challenges of alcoholism. This may result to taking alcohol in order to find comfort and solace for their problems. Family units provide excellent examples to children and alcoholism breaks these families causing experience damage to children observing parents under the influence of alcohol.
Program cannot provide its participants with alcohol-free families. This leaves a void that they should fill out together with alcohol-addicted parents. Parents disregard the advice from their children and frustrate the efforts that children make towards helping them quit the alcohol addiction.Adult Children of Alcoholics Counseling Session
Conclusion
Counseling sessions aim at helping children to cope with the problems that they face in their struggle with alcoholism. These sessions are supremely crucial in order to play the part that alcoholic parents ought to fill.
It is the responsibility of every adult, mature, and responsible person in the society to provide moral guidance to young adults having problems with alcoholic parents. Unfortunately, these responsibilities mostly left for counselors and relatives alone.
Young people need a lot of personal discipline and ample power of will in order to avoid the destructive influence of alcohol habit from their parents. Mentorship is extremely beneficial at this stage because it provides the necessary motivation to overcome the influence that they are facing on an everyday basis. At adolescence and young adult stage, children are more vulnerable to life problems.
They require guidelines and a close person to answer their queries, as this is a stage of self-discovery. Most of the alcoholic parents are rarely available for their children. This leaves the children in a state of confusion thus; responsible people in the society like professional counselors try to provide directions to the children.
This program helps children to overcome the problems. They have a better understanding of the problem afterwards, hence are able to provide support to their parents. Children can change future generations if they are taught to find proper and efficient problem solving methods instead of giving in to alcoholism. Alcoholism eventually causes immense human sufferings to the society.Adult Children of Alcoholics Counseling Session