You're listening to Latinx Therapy.

The information shared in this podcast is not a substitute for seeking help from a licensed

mental health professional and is not a substitute for psychological diagnoses or treatment.

I'm your host, Adriana Alejandra Alejandro, licensed marriage and family therapist.

This is session number five. I'm going to start with some facts about substance abuse and addiction in our culture.

About 9.5% of Latinos will have alcohol dependence at some point in their lives, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

We have to keep in mind that this is a small percentage because many incidents are not reported.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, otherwise known as SAMHSA, reports

that 23.5 million people all over the age of 12 needed substance abuse treatment in 2009. Imagine how

many of those teens were Latin X. There are many factors that create the potential for substance

abuse within our culture, such as religious prosecution, fear of deportation, lack of legal

protection due to status, lack of job opportunities or travel

freedom to visit family members, trauma from involuntary immigration, such as fleeing from

their country due to violence, being victim of a crime, or acculturation and immigration.

Immigration itself can be a traumatic, multi-layered experience that can have a lifelong

negative impact on a person. Individuals have to leave their homes and cultures, sometimes by force,

as we all know, and endure a long and or expensive or dangerous journey to their port of destination.

Upon arrival, they settle down in a foreign land where the language, the customs, and the

culture are very different from what they know.

Culturation, which is the cultural and psychological changes from exposure to a new culture,

can also bring feelings of loneliness, frustration, and isolation.

And so some of our people resort to

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