Issues in Family Violence

Winter 2002

Substance Abuse, Control and Abusive Men

John Went

This is the final article in our series about the five components of the operational profile of abusers. As we complete this series of articles, we have been reminded that the profile is, indeed, operational. That is, it is intended to help readers understand and develop effective interventions for a man’s abusiveness in the context of real life. As noted by David Lloyd (see page 7), all of the traits in the profile can be applied to a wide range of human beings. This highlights the fact that abusive men are really no different than men in general, except that they take their need for power and control to a level that causes fear in the members of their family.

The focus of this part of the profile is the relationship of drug use to a man’s abusive control of the behavior, emotions and thoughts of his partner and children. We are indebted to Larry Bennett, a researcher at the Jane Addams College of Social Work, whose work has helped give form to the chaotic experience of battered women, as they deal with their partner’s addictions and abuse. We will be taking some of Larry’s work and applying it to real life situations that men have described to us.

Substance abuse and domestic violence intersect in a number of different areas. The interaction of these two, separate problems can vary from person to person over the lifespan of both forms of abuse. Drinking or drug use might precede an incident of abuse or be used by the abuser to deal with feelings of guilt and shame afterwards. Family members might feel threatened whenever an abuser begins to use substances even though he does not get abusive every time he uses. Even occasional violence while using can trigger their fears and insecurity every time he picks up his drug of choice.

Furthermore, a substance abuser may use violence, abuse or control to gain access to a vehicle or money to be able to go out and use. Or, when confronted by family members about the consequences of their substance abuse, a domestic violence abuser might use violence to quash any challenges. In the latter two cases, the abuser can be sober when being violent. All these dynamics can strongly associate the batterer’s substance abuse with control over others thoughts, feelings and actions.

The interplay of domestic violence and substance use can continue into recovery from chemical dependence. When a domestic violence abuser enters treatment, his family might experience their first taste of safety while he is away. But involvement in family counseling at the treatment center when a safety plan has not been put in place could increase the risk of emotional abuse and violence all over again. Even when a substance abuser that is also a domestic violence perpetrator gets sober, he might use his recovery to continue to control his family. For instance, he might want to take responsibility for past mistakes while using, and expect his family to follow his agenda to do this. In the process, he continues to control the household through his expectations of how others need to respond to his recovery. Examining all the interactions between substance abuse and domestic violence is beyond the scope of this article.

The following story about Alex and Luanne is a composite of several incidents, but it will illustrate several ways that chemical addictions can aggravate a man’s abuse of his family. (Editor: Pseudonyms have been used to protect confidentiality.)

Alex, by his own report, is addicted to alcohol. In fact, he is convinced that he is a substance abuser, not a wife abuser. Most of his family and friends have tried to get him to stop drinking, believing, as he does, that alcohol causes him to hurt his wife, Luanne. He has recently been through detox and attends AA meetings regularly.

One night, prior to his recent abstinence, Alex started a fight with Luanne over the way she had cooked the chicken for dinner. After throwing his plate of chicken at her feet, he stormed out of the house and headed straight for the bar. Two drinks later, feeling badly for the way he treated Luanne before he left, he called her from the bar to apologize and invite her out for drinks. She refused to talk to him on the phone and tried to convince him to come home. Her refusal to join him caused him to slam down the phone, go back to the bar, and continue to drink for several hours. When he returned home, he went immediately to Luanne’s bed and demanded sex. When she tried to get him to go to sleep, he grabbed his pistol from the drawer and raped her at gunpoint.

From his recovery community and cultural context, Alex has been given ongoing support for his belief that he is an addict, not a batterer. Alex, his friends, members of his AA group, and even sometimes Luanne, actually allow him to minimize his violence by emphasizing his substance abuse. Alcohol is the problem, they say, and his abuse of Luanne would end if he stopped drinking. It is generally easier, and more socially acceptable, to describe addiction as the reason for being “out of control,” thereby reducing the shame felt by Alex, as well as the need to deal with his control issues.

Alone, becoming sober does not guarantee an end to a man’s abusiveness towards his wife. Sobriety is often a necessary first step to being mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually available to end violence, but his culture, personal contradictions and lack of consequences will enable him to continue his abuse even while sober. Although arrested and made, by the court, to attend a batterer’s treatment program, Alex continued to focus only on his need to stay sober, even complaining that being with “abusers” kept him from AA meetings.

As Alex began his night at the bar, his first couple of drinks increased what the Harvard psychologist David McClelland calls altruistic power (1) or what we think of as chivalrous entitlement. He began to think of himself as Luanne’s “rescuer” (in this case, from himself) and expected her to give in to his attempt to control her behavior. When, out of fear and anger, she refused to join him at the bar, the increased alcohol in his body helped him misinterpret her behavior. Her refusal, based on fear and anger, caused him to believe she was interested in other men. At some point during the night, he even thought she was at home having sex with her mythical boyfriend. Alex is generally a jealous man and the drug in his system aggravated that internal experience. He continued drinking, in part, to try and rid himself of these feelings. In this case, however, he only succeeded in magnifying his fear. In his mind, the only way to end his experience of fear was to stop Luanne from seeing other men.

As his drinking continued, he shifted from altruistic power over Luanne to increased, as Larry Bennett says, personal power through domination. Within our operational profile, he developed entitlement thinking as if he were the victim. He was no longer concerned about her feelings and only cared about resolving his own. As with all abusive men, the resolution came through controlling someone else, not through controlling himself. His fear that Luanne might be leaving him, based on a substance-enhanced misperception of her behavior, was quickly covered by anger, a more “manly” emotion. By the time Alex returned home his choice of control tactics had already been worked out in his mind. He showed her that she belonged to him.

As with various mental health conditions, in abusive men substance abuse only aggravates an already existing need to obtain power by controlling others. Alex wanted to hang his hat on his addiction to prove he was not abusing his wife. Many other men, having made that same choice, discover that their abuse of the family does not stop when the drugs stop. They come to believe that they have two problems. Both are interrelated, but require different means to stop.

Later on, Alex discovered his need to work on becoming a less violent man because his violence continued after sobriety. Luanne, after an initial period of relief when Alex stopped drinking, found that a sober Alex was less predictable than a drunk Alex. He was now unable to numb his emotions and thoughts with alcohol. Random feelings of jealousy and loss as he focused his attention on Luanne led to outbursts of rage that seemed to her to have no logic. Since Alex remained in his domestic abuse treatment program for several years, he slowly began to see his sober abuse and control of Luanne. He continued in treatment even after she divorced him.

In the operational profile of abusive men, drug use is an aggravating factor, not a causative factor. Solving one problem does not solve the other. Chemical dependency and self-help groups can be enormously helpful by lifting the emotional and mental fog that surrounds a substance abuser, making it easier for him to take responsibility for himself and his abuse.

Endnote

1. McClelland, D.C. (1975). Power: The inner experience. New York: Wiley.

(c) 2002, The Non-Violence Alliance. Permission to reprint with the following information "Originally published in Issues in Family Violence, Volume 4, Issue 2 Winter 2002, The Non-Violence Alliance, www.endingviolence.com."