Amber HollingsworthRecovery Conversation Simulator, Amber's Recovery Practice Lab · Interactive learning tool trained on Amber methodoloy

Family's Burden Or Responsibility?

6 Jan 2025 · 0 min

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Amber Hollingsworth argues that mainstream addiction treatment typically isolates the person with addiction—providing counselors, sponsors, and peer groups—while excluding family members. She critiques both professional treatment and community supports (e.g., AA/Al‑Anon) for advising families to step away, and suggests this exclusion is unfortunate because families could be helpful in recovery.

Traditionally, in addiction treatment land, you send the addictive person to treatment. The counselors, the sponsors, the peer support groups. Everybody else is trying to help this addictive person, but no one's dealing with the family. In fact, in the treatment world, even in the, like, AA world and the rest of those, like community support groups, there is an active Keep the family out of it. Right? And we'll say you need to go to Al Anon, and then Al Anon is going to tell you to back out of it. And we just need you to go away because you're not helping, which is unfortunate because all these other people actually can be of great help.