Domestic Violence: Understanding and Treating the Drug Addicted Male Batterer

Although not really all that alarming, statistics regarding the amount of batterers under the influenced during their assaults show an amazing rate of at least 60% being under the influence of alcohol and 70% under the influence of both alcohol and drugs during the assault. This suggests that mind-altering substances including drugs and alcohol work to fuel a person's anger and aggression, which when added to an already explosive personality, causes violence, specifically domestic violence. The combination can also increase or make a person's behavior explosive although they don't have volatile behavior. Alcohol and drugs increase the severity of the violence and the likelihood that violence will occur.

Another statistic showed that the use of alcohol and drugs enhanced the likelihood of violence than just alcohol alone. However according to certain drugs and their classifications and effects, violence or aggression should not occur in most individuals. Alcohol is labeled a depressant, which means it depresses the central nervous system, and is suppose to relax or calm a person down. Heroin is also a depressant and causes it's users to "space out" for hours. Although heroin doesn't cause many to be aggressive or violent, alcohol definitely does. This may be because alcohol is also labeled a stimulant, which stimulates the central nervous system, and can cause erratic, unpredictable, and violent.

To get a better understanding in how to treat the addicted male batterer, treatment specialists need to understand some drug addicted males become batterers may not or may not be due to their drug addiction. Heroin is definitely a depressant and under its influence the person is not aggressive at all, quite the opposite, so someone who uses heroin and becomes violent probably already has violent tendencies. Some people can take stimulant drugs like cocaine and alcohol and not become violent, if aggression is not part of the person's personality before any use of drugs in the system. But for the person that already has aggressive or violent tendencies, drugs can and will fuel the person's already aggressive behavior.

When substance abuse is detected after a violent attack the batterer is sent to separate treatment programs for substance and violent abuse instead of receiving one treatment for both since both seem to be fueled by the other. This type of thinking needs to change. There should be a treatment program that addresses both issues. But treatment should also focus on preventive programs. Most batterers are forced into treatment, they don't go because they want to they go because they have to, which works against any sort of treatment program having any success. If the person's internal motivators like self-esteem and pride is next to nothing or lacking, than external motivators like legal penalties will not be as effective. The criminal justice system has many different duties and goals and each system deals with substance and violence abuse differently, which is part of the problem.

There needs to be an exclusive, interchangeable goals, and workable plan between all parts of the criminal justice system and drug treatment programs for society to effectively prevent and treat domestic violence. There also needs to be standard across the board state laws. Another important piece of information is that treatment programs are often ill equipped and unable to handle batterers effectively. A lack of qualified staff, large caseloads, standard treatment, objectives and goals, individualized treatment, substance abuse is not dealt with among domestic offenders, and no dual treatment is available for substance abuse and violent abuse among offenders. All of these inadequacies further complicated the domestic violence problem.