Family Alcohol Abuse

Family Alcohol Abuse

Brief Introduction to the Report:

The specific stressor we focused on in developing our FCS and related threads posted for our CRCP week was alcoholism in the family. The FCS family consisted of a 46 year old mother, 48 year old father, 21 year old brother, and a 17 year old sister. The ethnicity and cultural background of the family was predominately African American. This family has an alcoholic family identity. Although it was difficult for the mother to decrease her alcohol consumption to nothing, because she has a close-knit supportive family she knew she was able to do it, and concentrate on her family and repair all the wounds.

During our CRCP week we posted the FCS and threads related to: (a) our interviews and similarities and differences in responses from our interviews, (b) our summary of outside research and web literature we reviewed in looking at this stressor and family crisis. We also came up with “questions to consider”, in order to get the ball and discussions rolling in the discussion board, we received great insight, discussion, and opinions from these questions.

Group Dynamics:

After we first received notice of the topic for our CRCP project, I have to admit that we did procrastinate and we did not contact each other right away. I was the first to contact my two group members via email. I emailed each member to see exactly where everyone’s head were at and ideas that we had about our CRCP. We started to discuss how we would conduct and present our report. About one week before the report was due we broke down how we would create the FCS and we discussed what parts everyone would do and just made sure we had everything covered. About 4 days later we discussed our interviews that had we each had completed. We emailed each other our interviews and all the information that went along with it.

Candice, Su-Yin, and I were able to work together well in distributing all the work load and we had no problem in deciding which direction we wanted to go with our FCS. Our FCS was based on the readings as well as my current family situation. I sent the draft to each group member to see if there was anything that needed to be changed, added, or removed, and we made sure that we were satisfied with the ending results. I have to admit that it was more challenging doing the work as a team via email rather than seeing yourself in class on a regular basis and discussing the report in person. Overall though, I thought this was a great and different working experience in communicating via email. The CRCP was definitely a team effort.

The Interview:

The interview I did was described in interview #2 of the FCS. After being assigned substance abuse, I immediately knew whom I was going to interview being that I set it up one month prior. It was one of my church members who I have known for about 10 years and recently heard her and her husband tell their testimony in church. The interviewee was more than happy to share her experiences and parts of her personal life. She figured if she could help or save one more person or one family from experiencing what she had been through then she knew she had done her job. She wants people to know her story so others can learn from her mistakes.

Reading the article “Developing an Alcoholic Family Identity”, I enjoyed the section on Family Identity Options. This area talked about the three categories of alcoholic families and whether alcoholism is based on your family origin. The three categories were “A Nonalcoholic Family Identity”, An Unresolved Alcoholic Family Identity, and An Alcoholic Family Identity. Another section was, Factors Influencing Alcoholic Identity Formation, which discussed family of heritage, boundary definition: level of contact with origin families and shared beliefs: family ritual section. Instantly after reading the family identity options section made me think of the family I was using for my FCS. After sharing all the material that I had learned and all the information I researched with my interviewee, I was satisfied. The interview was a great experience and I learned a lot. The interviewee talked about things that she did not share in her testimony at church and that made me grateful. The interviewee informed me that the interview helped her just as much as it helped me and she was very thankful.

Outside Research:

After my family and I have been going through the consequences of substance abuse for the last 1 Ð'Ð... years, I’ve learned a lot about alcoholism.

...