Why the Secondhand Drinking – Adverse Childhood Experiences Connection Matters
Why is it so important to understand the secondhand drinking – adverse childhood experiences connection? Because experiencing secondhand drinking as a child most often results in adverse childhood experiences for that child. And experiencing adverse childhood experiences can result in toxic-stress related physical and emotional health consequences across one’s lifetime. Two of the outcomes of those toxic-stress related health consequences, for example, are developing an alcohol use disorder or marrying an alcoholic. In other words, the connection can be a vicious cycle – a vicious cycle that perpetuates secondhand drinking-related adverse childhood experience from one generation to the next.
This cycle example is illustrated in Dr. Robert Anda’s slide below, taken from his paper, “The Health and Social Impact of Growing Up With Alcohol Abuse and Related Adverse Childhood Experiences: The Human and Economic Costs of the Status Quo.”
Now, to explain.
About the Terms Adverse Childhood Experiences and Secondhand Drinking
ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) refers to traumatic incidents in childhood. They were identified in the epidemiological CDC-Kaiser ACE Study that surveyed 17,000 participants. The Study looked at how 10 types of childhood trauma (ACEs) affected a person’s long-term health. They included:
- physical, emotional or sexual abuse;
- physical and emotional neglect;
- living with a family member a problem drinker or alcoholic or used street drugs
- was in a household with a family member who was depressed or mentally ill or attempted suicide;
- having parents who divorced or separated
- having a family member who was incarcerated
- witnessing a mother or step-mother being physically abused.
Secondhand drinking refers to the negative impacts a person’s drinking behaviors has on others. Drinking behaviors are typically unintentional (unless they are the behaviors a person exhibits when not drinking). They are the result of the ethyl alcohol chemicals in alcoholic beverages interrupting the brain’s normal cell-to-cell communication system while “waiting” to be metabolized by enzymes in the liver. This occurs at an average rate of 1 hour for each “standard drink,” which is defined as 5 ounces of table wine or 12 ounces of regular beer or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof hard liquor. Drinking patterns that cause drinking behaviors include binge drinking, alcohol abuse, and alcoholism.
Common drinking behaviors include: verbal, physical, emotional abuse; neglect; blackouts; sexual assault; breaking promises to stop or cut down; shaming, blaming, denying; domestic violence; unpredictable behaviors; alcohol-induced crime; and driving while impaired, to name a few.
Coping with these drinking behaviors causes serious physical and emotional and quality of life impacts – especially for the family and within that, especially for the children. These impacts are the consequence of toxic stress. Toxic stress changes brain and body health and function, which can cause a person to experience migraines, anxiety, depression, stomach ailments, sleep disorders, autoimmune disorders, changes in eating habits, and so much more. Toxic stress also causes a person to adopt unhealthy, toxic stress-related, reactionary coping skills (explosive anger, physically lashing out, shutting down emotionally, as examples).
Now for the Connection Between Secondhand Drinking – Adverse Childhood Experiences
One of the 10 ACEs measured in the original CDC-Kaiser ACE Study was living with a family member who was a problem drinker or alcoholic.
The toxic stress outcomes for a child that are associated with this particular ACE are the result of that child coping with their family member’s drinking behaviors. Coping with their family members’s drinking behaviors, as a child, can result in that problem drinker or alcoholic causing up to 7 more of the 10 ACEs measured in the original ACE Study. These additional ACEs include: physical, sexual and verbal abuse; physical and emotional neglect; witnessing a mother being abused; or losing a parent to separation, divorce or other reason. It is not uncommon for a child growing up with a family member who is a problem drinker or alcoholic to experience at least 3-4 ACEs.
And it’s not only the problem drinker or alcoholic’s behaviors that affect that child. It is the problem drinker or alcoholic’s drinking behavioral affects on every other member in the family, and then the way the other family members interact with the drinker, the child and each other. All of which causes crushing, life-robbing, toxic stress outcomes for all concerned — especially for the child. As explained above, two of those outcomes include developing an alcohol use disorder or marrying an alcoholic.
Bottom Line
Clearly a great deal needs to be done to help educate all of us about this secondhand drinking – adverse childhood experiences connection. One area of promise is the emerging research on alcohol’s harm to others – secondhand drinking. My hope is this research expands to incorporate the kinds of harm to others associated with toxic stress.
Why?
Because of the ACEs-toxic stress connection and because living with a family member who is a problem drinker or alcoholic can result in a child’s ACE score reaching 3 or 4 or even a staggering 8.
Resources Explaining the Secondhand Drinking – Adverse Childhood Experiences Connection
- Harvard University Center on the Developing Child > Toxic Stress
- The Developing Brain and Adverse Childhood Experiences
- Alcohol’s Harm to Others | Secondhand Drinking
- Anda, Robert, MD, MS, “The Health and Social Impact of Growing Up With Alcohol Abuse and Related Adverse Childhood Experiences: The Human and Economic Costs of the Status Quo.”
- Nurse Rona Renner‘s August 20th KPFA Radio show, “The Consequences of Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs) Through a Lifespan.”
Lisa Frederiksen
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I REQUEST permission to use the ACE Score…Alcohol Use and Abuse graph displayed in one of your presentations.
I am putting together a curriculum for faith communities and your graph would be appreciated to use.
Hi Rev. Hill – here is the document in which this graph appears http://celebratingfamilies.net/PDF/RobertAnda_article.pdf