The Lightwood's Izzy and Addiction - Shadow hunters
We see in this clip that their mother favors political alliance's over the family's happiness, and order over comfort. Their mother needs a quick political alliance to restore their influence at the Clave, this is the organization that oversees the Shadow Hunters internationally. It is based in Alicante the Shadow Hunter's spiritual homeland. That is glamoured to Mundane much like most of the Shadow World.
This leads to her seeking out relationships that don't have any real attachment to them before she meets Raphaelle and later Simon. Her secure attachment isn't to her Mother and Father it is to Alec and we see that he is the Caregiver of the siblings.
Izzy is anxious in her attachment style, she is attached to her dad, more than her mother as her mother is quite critical of her. This could be due to the socio-cultural environment of the Shadow World for Izzy's politically heavy family. Beyond their roles as a family, they have roles in the Shadow world and we see that Alec has heavier consequences for their parents' decisions in the fact that they are forcing him into what is essentially an arranged marriage.
She needs to fight for her own needs and in this, she also starts to fight for Alec's needs as well. daughters fight over their denied needs what needs is Izzy denied. This is unconditional acceptance, guidance, and the chance to be independent of the family. This sets her up for all of the risk factors for addiction.
In contrast, we see that Alec's attachment style is fearful and avoidant. We see this play out in his relationship with Magnus and how he overprotects Izzy.
Izzy was given a substance called Yin Fen after being possessed to go on a mission to the Iron citadel to meet her hero theIron sisters (The equivalent of a holy order of nuns). She isn't warned that it is addictive and through the head of the institute in season two ( they seem to go through a period of very unstable leadership). This leads her to seek out the substance and then through information given to her by Magnus she goes straight to the source. As Yin Fen is a drug that is made through vampire venom. ( it could be seen as a metaphor for a heron or opioid addiction).
So she goes to Raphael to essentially get her to fix it as she isn't able to seek it out through legal means. We see this in reality as many people will seek out places and people that aren't great for their mental health and they then spiral down due to having these people in their lives. This relationship is not based on respect it is transactional in that Raphelle gets high off shadowhunter blood and Izzy gets her to fix from the Venum that it provides when he bites her and this isn't a great thing for someone with an addiction as we see that they are both feeding their addictions and this is the basis of their relationship. We start to see classic addict behavior from Izzy in that she is disappearing at all hours of the day and night, she is only thinking about her next fix, and she is hiding her addiction from her family.
From Rachelle, we see controlling behaviors and manipulation as we see that he hides her phone when the demon enters the institute, and we see that her family can't get onto her and that Raphelle starts to admit that he cares for her but is getting high off her blood and we see that it's not a healthy relationship for anyone in the relationship but it is tolerated.
This leads to her having a relationship with Raphael as he saves her from some of the vampires that aren't a part of his clan. This leads them into a co-dependent relationship, we see Raphael talk to her about getting clean however this can take several attempts and we see her find a root that helps her which could be seen as the root she is taking could be considered a methadone replacement. The root she is taking could be considered a methadone replacement. Methadone is often used in addiction as it helps the person control their cravings and this then helps them to rebuild their lives. As often addiction isn't a one size fits all approach you don't become an addict over night so you don't become clean over night as well.
We see Alec support Izzy in her attempts to "dry out, yet later we see that Alec can't control himself when he finds out that she went to Raphael to get her to fix and we see him attack Raphael this I will talk about in a later blog post about Alec and his anger, as it is something that we see often in maladaptive behaviour's.
Background Reading for this post.
Alcoholics Anonymous (aa.org.au)
Uncovering the root cause of mother-daughter conflict - Counseling Today
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