As a child’s love affair with drugs progresses, the parents’ relationship goes through different stages too, from disbelief, to worry, to a recognition of the reality and feelings of anger, terror, and helplessness. By the time a child has been seduced by alcohol or drug use, parents may be constantly at odds. One denies the problem, the other recognizes it. Or both continue to feel that something is wrong but never connect the trouble to the same cause. Even when the problems’ origins are clear, dissension may persist. Blaming is part of the game.

When an Ohio couple found out their son was addicted to heroin, “it was catastrophic. My husband cried all weekend. We were both furious with each other. We were both convinced the other ‘had done it’! The blaming didn’t last long, but it was blazing.”

Their therapist told them, “You need to stay together and work together to get through this,” and they did. They realized that their resentments of each other went way back—“He was always too lenient with the kid”; “She’s an off-the-wall mother”—and probably had little to do with drug abuse. “And,” the mother says, “we came too see that maybe it was his fault, maybe mine, maybe nobody’s—whatever. We’ve got to deal with it.”

Counselors say that blame, guilt, and shame are the common trilogy of feelings when parents confront a child’s drug abuse. The vast majority of parents blame the other parent and are filled with helpless rage. “I couldn’t fix my kid,” one mother says, “so I was mad at my husband because he couldn’t do it and my drug-using kid was mad at himself because he couldn’t do it either.” All this anger spills over into arguments, fights, and constant turmoil.

Some adolescents reinforce the discord and are what one counselor calls “professional parent-splitters.” One marriage survived this ploy because the parents made an agreement: “If we knew we didn’t have consensus,” the father says, “we’d say, ‘We’ll tell you our answer in our own good time.’ Then we’d talk it over alone first, and whoever had the harder line won.”

Some marriages fall apart under the stress, while others get stronger. “My marriage almost pulled apart,” one mother remembers. “My husband and my other kids thought it was all my fault. Then, when our daughter went into treatment, we had to go into a parents’ group. My husband didn’t want to have anything to do with it, but he said he’d ‘just this once.’”

During the session, they cried because life had gotten so dismal. Finally, they admitted that they both secretly hoped their daughter would never come home from the treatment center so they could go on fantasizing that life could be as before.

After the three-hour group meeting, they were drained. “We put our arms around each other, both crying, and felt closer than we’d felt in years,” the mother says. Their daughter has been in aftercare now for two years and both her parents are recovering along with her.