Host: How does teen drinking affect the family specifically? Judith Welles Cousins: Teen drinking affects the family in some very serious and significant ways. The most obvious is or what families feel the most is an increase in tension and conflict in the family and that becomes true on both sides. There is more anxiety, more worry and more anger, more confusion, more bewilderment on the part of both the teens and the parents. Another thing that happens and this happens when you have someone who is using, whether they are teens or adults and that is the family starts to organize their behavior and their attention around the person that 's using and in this case, it becomes the problem teenager.

So the teenager becomes the problem and often, when I see families, they come in to see me because they have a problem teen. That only adds to the anger and the guilt of the teenager as well as you have parents who are also feeling angry and guilty because something is going terribly wrong in their family. So in those respects, families change and they change in ways that are unpleasant for all members of the family including sisters and brothers as well. 1