Substance Abuse as a Developmental Disorder and the role of Parenting Styles: An analysis of Drew Barrymore's troubled childhood

Drew Blythe Barrymore was born in 1975, California, to John Drew Barrymore and Ildiko Jaid. Unfortunately, her parents separated 2 months before she was born and Jaid was left to raise Drew all by herself. They eventually got divorced when she was 9 years old.

Born into Hollywood’s prestigious Barrymore family, with three generations of movie stars preceding her, the budding actress' career began with an appearance in a TV advert before she a even a year old. Aged seven, her godfather Steven Spielberg, cast her in the cult classic ET and three years later she starred in Stephen King's Cat's Eye.The young prodigy was soon Hollywood’s little darling, charming everyone she met and hitting it off at the box office. Then it all went terribly wrong.

Drew Barrymore recalls having her first alcoholic beverage at age 9. By 10 years of age, she was hooked on marijuana, by 12, on cocaine and amphetamines. She went to rehab aged 14 years old and after being given a clean bill of health, emancipated herself from the care of her mother, who she admits had been abusive and neglectful.

While substance abuse in adolescence is beginning to be viewed as a developmental disorder that affects a certain age group, studies show that the underlying factors for developing a substance abuse disorder can be traced back to prenatal conditions. A growing body of studies indicates that prenatal stress highly impacts birth outcomes and postnatal development especially in the domains of emotional regulation (Talge et. al, 2007). That, coupled with indulgence in alcohol and drugs during pregnancy - which not only impacts fetal development but also the establishment of early neural structures - may predispose one towards drug abuse and addiction. (Rutherford et. al, 2013). As luck would have it, Jaid was subject to extreme amounts of emotional stress in the last trimester of her pregnancy with baby Drew during which she was going through a separation with her husband, and has admitted to have indulged in alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine. As if this wasn’t enough, on her father’s side, the Barrymore family had a famous alcohol problem transcending generations and her father, John had completely fallen prey to it, checking in and out of rehab multiple times. This posed as yet another risk factor, according to Kendler et al. (2000) who via twin studies found heritability estimates to be as high as 60 to 80% when it came to alcohol/substance abuse and dependence behaviours.

It didn't stop there of course, and a young Drew was exposed to a single parent who was heavily reliant on illicit substances to get through the day. Interestingly enough a  relatively strong pattern emerges between maternal drug involvement and child behaviors, according to Kandel (1990) who believes that this link isn't as strong when it comes to paternal influence. Watching her mother indulge in these maladaptive patterns of behaviour likely conditioned Drew to think that it was okay for her to do the same eventually. According to Rutherford et al. (2013) for addicted parents, caring for a child is less rewarding and more stressful due to a dysregulation between stress and reward neural circuits that develops as a result of the substance dependency.  Another study has also indicated decreased engagement and increased passivity between substance-using mothers and their newborn infants (Gottwald and Thurman, 1994) . A clear consequence of this was most probably blatant neglect; which brings one to examine the link between parenting styles and substance abuse in childhood/ early adolescence.

Maccoby and Martin (1983), have built upon previous models to propose a fourfold classification of parenting styles based on two dimensions: ‘control’ and ‘warmth’ and thus established the authoritative, authoritarian, neglectful and permissive styles. . The parental style traditionally associated with substance use is the neglectful one - being lo on both control and warmth . Such parents are likely to be indifferent, laying down no limits but also failing to provide emotional stimulation to their children, which is a risk factor for the use of drugs in adolescents, according to a swedish longitudinal study which found that the neglectful parenting style was associated with worse substance use outcomes across all substances (Berge et. al, 2016). Not only was Drew’s mother emotionally absent, she also rode on Drew’s fast growing popularity by constantly taking her to nightclubs and hollywood parties, before she was even 10 years old, where she was exposed to the sort of crowd that would indulge her in substances right before her mother’s eyes. By the time she entered her teens, she’d developed depression - a result of neglectful parenting, impulse control problems and heavy drug use which led to a suicide attempt at age 14, famously landing her in rehab.

Since then, the actor has turned her life around. She moved away from her parents, pursued a career all by herself, wrote memoirs about her early struggles and managed to carve a niche in Hollywood. Best known for her roles in Charlie’s Angels, 50 First Dates and Blended, the now 44 year old might just be a prime example of how impactful a person’s early experiences with their primary caregiver can be when it comes to developing risky behaviours like substance abuse; at the same time being a poignant reminder of the role of one’s genetic influences in behavior patterns that emerge later in life.

References

Talge, N. M., Neal, C., & Glover, V. (2007). Antenatal maternal stress and long-term effects on child neurodevelopment: How and why? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48(3-4), 245-261. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01714.x

Rutherford HJ, Potenza MN, Mayes LC. The neurobiology of addiction and attachment. In: Suchman NE, Pajulo M, Mayes LC, editors. Parenting and substance abuse: developmental approaches to intervention. New York: Oxford University Press; 2013. p. 3–23

Kendler, K. S., Karkowski, L. M., Neale, M. C., & Prescott, C. A. (2000). Illicit psychoactive substance use,heavy use, abuse, and dependence in a US population-based sample of male twins. Archives of General

Psychiatry, 57, 261–269

Kandel, D. B. (1990). Parenting Styles, Drug Use, and Children's Adjustment in Families of Young Adults. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 52(1), 183. doi:10.2307/352849

Gottwald SR, Thurman SK. The effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on mother–infant interaction and infant arousal in the newborn period. Top Early Child Spec Educ. 1994;14(2):217–31. doi: 10.1177/027112149401400206

Maccoby, E.E., & Martin, J.A. (1983). Socializations in the context of the family: Parent-child interactions. In P.H. Mussen (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 4. Socialization, personality, and social development (pp. 1–102). New York, NY: Wiley

Berge, J., Sundell, K., Öjehagen, A., & Håkansson, A. (2016). Role of parenting styles in adolescent substance use: Results from a Swedish longitudinal cohort study. BMJ Open, 6(1). doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2015-008979