In 1989, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) established National Recovery Month as a national observance to promote and support new evidence-based substance use treatment and recovery practices.

Addiction and addiction recovery are realities in our community; they always have been and likely will be into the near future.  Until recently many people in the Jewish community denied that addiction was a Jewish issue.  Now there is a much greater recognition of how addiction challenges our own.  However, many Jewish families still express deep feelings of isolation when confronting addiction in themselves or their loved ones.

There are so many ways, large and small, that each of us can support Jewish families struggling with active addiction or in recovery, to bring them out of isolation and into the loving support our community offers.  Here are some ideas:

by Amanda Platner, M.A.  Psychological Services Pre-doctoral Intern

“Children in alcoholic families suffer trauma as acute as soldiers in combat; they also carry the trauma like an albatross throughout their lives.” –Pamela Weintraub, Author of "A Toxic Brew," Psychology Today, 2007

Like many diseases, alcoholism affects all members of a family. Some of its most vulnerable victims are children. The National Association for Children of Alcoholics reports that approximately one in five adults grew up in a household with an alcoholic family member. Of the 26.8 million children of alcoholics in the United States, over 40 percent are under the age of 18 (NACoA, 2002). “