Montgomery County family finds path from addiction to recovery includes everyone

MEDIA, Pennsylvania (WPVI) -- Addiction doesn't just affect an individual. It affects everyone in the family, often for a lifetime.

A Montgomery County family found that the path to recovery needs to include everyone in the household.

Peg Beavers of Hatboro, Pennsylvania says the first clue to her husband's addiction was a bank statement for an account she didn't know about.

"I knew there was something wrong. I just didn't know what it was," she said.

For years, Cary Beavers pulled back from family life, and they pulled back from him.

"We're huge Philadelphia Eagles fans. My husband's a season ticket holder. And the kids were starting to go - No, I don't want to go," said Peg.

When Peg saw all the ATM cash withdrawals, she confronted him.

"That's when he finally admitted that he was addicted to painkillers and he needed help. And actually what I said to him was 'Get help or get out,'" she said.

Cary says his addictive personality allowed painkillers for bad knees to spiral out of control. Through a family doctor, he found Main Line Health's Mirmont Center.

Meanwhile, Peg learned the family was nearly bankrupt.

"I found out how he took care of the bills after he went in. He just took them and put them in a bag. He didn't pay them," she says.

Mary Cosgrove, a Mirmont family support coordinator, says families often deny their own suffering.

"I often get the question, like, I'm not the one with the problem. Why do I need to come and get help?" Mary said. "You're going to act out in some type of behavior to try to get your needs met, right?"

"When addiction is present in the family, we often, as family members, become addicted to that chaos and dysfunction," she added.

Mary says family help takes many forms - counseling, virtual support groups, and retreats. For Peg, that education has been essential to helping Cary stay clean for eight and a half years.

"Only by being strong yourself can you help the other person," she says. "Because they're not bad people. They just have a very bad disease."

Peg and Mary say many of those working in family recovery at Mirmont have experienced addiction in their own families, so they have a special empathy.