The Radiation Bomb of Mental Paralysis
It's fallout for family, friends and others
Music is an art that digs deep into the soul. When melodies and lyrics not only move you but teach you, well, then you have something special.
The Lumineers have such a collection of tunes released in 2019, an album titled III. The songs connect, telling a personal, fictional account of people dealing with substance abuse addiction. An NPR interview focused on why the band tackled the subject, and it’s worth the listen.
What struck me is how it demonstrates that addiction grips the family of the person with the problem, along with the one dealing with substance abuse. Drummer Jeremiah Fraites says the person’s habit has the “fallout effect … of a radiation bomb” spreading the toxins to all those around him. I argue that we forget those people absorbing the radiation. This is the shared story of people who pick up the pieces, who compensate, who sometimes accidentally facilitate the addict’s destructive pattern.
The story is the same for family, friends, and colleagues of a person with mental health struggles. This I know this first hand. When I fell into the deepest hole of depression, my family carried the burden of my mental absence. I withdrew and the household chores and parenting rested on the shoulders of the family. What did I know? I was buried deep inside my skull. They worried and couldn’t bring themselves to tell me their own unwanted load. They carried on without me.
They joined about 8.4 million others who care for a person with mental health issues, according to a National Alliance on Mental Illness estimate. These family members spend 32 hours a week assisting the troubled. That’s 32 hours of unpaid work.
Truth is that when the person with the mental health issue gets help, the family has to make yet another adjustment. Do they trust the loved one’s improvement? The old patterns of accommodating the problem cause another recalibration. And we humans have a great tendency to stick with what we know, even when the norm weighs us down. Better the devil you know.
Family of those with an addiction have support, such as Al-Anon. Group therapy that includes family members and friends of those with substance abuse problems illuminate the contours of the struggle. But it allows the clients’ to see what those around him/her deal with too. When I interned as a therapist at the intensive outpatient program at the Coliseum Behavioral Health (Macon, Georgia, I saw how this also aids both the mental health client along with the substance abuse combatant.
There is a beauty in lifting up all who are impacted. Everyone hears the various stories of their own tussles. They learn coping strategies together. They share the burdens with each other. This should lead us all to embrace a holistic approach.
Anyone unconvinced of this shared experience should plug in the Lumineers III. Hear their tale and know that this includes everyone connected not just to the substance abuse but to the mental health condition.