New Study Comfirms: Opioid Use Blocks Normal Parenting InstinctsIt should really not come as a surprise that opioid drugs -- legal or not -- could interfere with parenting instincts, given that we already know how much they affect basic cognitive functioning. However, it's important to have this, or any, assumption backed up by science, just to be on the safe side.

To be fair, parents who are using illegal drugs -- or misusing legal medications -- aren't doing so because they don't want to be good parents. I hesitate to classify parents struggling with a chemical dependency problem as being simply "bad parents."

I have never been an addict, so I can't say for sure about the thought patterns surrounding this poor coping skill, but I know from reading about the science and memoirs of addictions -- as well as my experience in supporting parents with a history of chemical dependency -- that substance abuse changes how the brain works more so than other addictive habits, and so it's not just a matter of a drug-abusing parent to stop using cold-turkey.

This is not to say that it's OK to use -- certainly not -- just that it's more complicated than simply accusing an addict of not having strong willpower or saying their priorities aren't straight.

And it's not that uncommon among parents. The last report of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration came out in 2009, showing that more than 1 in 10 children were currently living with a substance-abusing parent.

A former addict, Tracey Helton Mitchell, shared with The New York Times a glimpse into the mind of a using parent.

She said parents use opioids to provide relief to emotional pain that they can't find the time to process in a healthy way due to their parenting responsibilities. Opioids do the trick by causing a feeling of disconnect from that emotional distress, but at the same time, the drugs cause an overarching disconnection that dulls their emotional bonds to their children.

Keep in mind the extreme amount of emotional pain that must be present to lead a parent to seek out opioids (granted substance abuse also accompanies a lack of healthy coping skills).

Perhaps images of parents, like the one who overdosed on heroin in the car with their preschooler or who overdosed on fentanyl and was lying on the floor of a store with her panicked toddler, should stir a bit of empathy -- rather than only judgement and disgust.

What drives a parent to the extreme of overdosing on illegal drugs, or misusing legal medication? Pain that we non-addicts could probably never even imagine.

But let's get back to the science of opioids' effects on parenting instincts.

An American study, presented in September at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Congress in Vienna, Austria, found that brain scans of addicts showed less activity in response to baby face images than were seen in brain scans of healthy people. But after the administration of a medication used to block the effects of opioids, the addicts' brain scans showed activity similar to that of the healthy participants.

Other researchers who reviewed the study agreed that the findings appear to point to an overlap in the brain's neurocircuitry of both opioid effects and parent-child attachment -- a newly identified piece of the puzzle of what goes on in the brains of addicted parents.

It's already known that addiction on its own is extremely difficult to break, without factoring in children. Now, realizing the overlap, it makes sense to some researchers why parents cannot simply prioritize their parenting responsibilities over their addiction -- their parenting instincts are being covered up.

Not that substance abuse isn't very serious for families. Looking alone at the most severe outcome, 29 states reported an average of nearly 18% of child deaths in 2014 associated with an addicted caregiver.

But researchers stress that what addicted parents need more of, besides access to knowledgeable rehab and long-term support services, isn't judgement or pity from the public but empathy and advocacy to support their recovery from addiction as they find ways to uncover their parent-child attachment neural pathways and be able to experience the family bonds they have been missing.

While it breaks my heart to think of the children in these families with addicted parents, it breaks my heart equally to think of the pain their parents must feel to seek out that kind of relief.

Hopefully research, like this new study, will help create intervention programs to give addicted parents a brighter future not only for them and their children, but also for their children's children who will inherit the coping skills of generations past.