Al-Anon: Support for friends and family of alcoholics

I wanted to bring awareness to the fact that there is a support group called Al-Anon. It is to provide guidance for friends and families of alcoholics. I'm sure many are aware of Alcoholics Anonymous for the alcoholic, but maybe not Al-Anon.

 

Created 16 years after Alcoholics Anonymous and co-founded by Lois W. (the wife of AA founder, Bill W.) and Anne B. The purpose of Al-Anon is to provide support for friends and family of alcoholics. Members are invited to share their stories of how they have been affected by someone else's drinking. Al-Anon is made up of spouses, parents, children, siblings, friends, employers and coworkers of alcoholics.

 

Find more information on Al-Anon here.

Random thoughts about my sobriety

I guess you could say that alcoholism feels like a close friend...it feels like home. My father, father's uncle, maternal grandfather, maternal grandmother and mother's uncles were alcoholics. Both sides of my family had their share of issues. It would make sense that I too would have my share of problems with it...genetic predisposition. Alcoholism was a familiar friend that was always hanging around me. My father's best friend owned the local bar and, at age 9, he would take me to the bar. I would sit at the bar drinking Cokes and watching him "pool shark" guys. He was an excellent pool player and it was a quick way to get money for alcohol. Then he would drive home drunk with me in the car. Life with my father was going from one wild house party to the next. Eventually, my father started letting me drink at age 13. This was because his drinking buddy had a 14 year old daughter and he allowed her to drink. His friends thought it was cute to have me light their cigarettes for them and I became hooked on those as well. I even ended up getting caught with a pack at school in 8th grade.
 

Without going into a long story let's just say that I fought it and overcame my demons. I remember how as selfish as it sounds, my friends did not want me to quit. Suddenly, the sober me felt like my friends and I didn't have much in common. It was a strange feeling and I didn't feel like myself... alcohol had been a part of my identity. It was my comfort and a friend I could count on when I felt pain. I ended up having to end friendships and learn to cope with my emotions rather than drink them away. One of the last conversations that validated I had to move on was when a friend asked "come on, you cant have just one?' "NO! Don't you understand?? I'm an alcoholic and I cant drink anymore!" I yelled.
 

How am I today? With years of sobriety under my belt, I finally have enough self control that I can be the sober person at the party. I can be the sober friend who is around others who are drinking. It's funny sometimes because people who know my story often feel awkward drinking around me. I tell them to relax because I am fine. Believe me if I wasn't, I would remove myself from the situation.



Loving the alcoholic

A person will come into your life, steal a piece of your heart and leave. It's those people that we can never seem to fully get over. Memories play like a movie on late nights as you lie awake in bed. You miss them so much that you live for those memories. It is a curse. There are the "what ifs" and you continuously question every angle. It's madness. You cannot stop it because in every quiet moment to yourself...you can't help thinking of what could have been. 

He was a good guy who never felt good enough. It was pointless to tell him any different. Hell bent on destroying anything good...one day he gave up and reached for a bottle. He purposely lied to push others away. Nothing would or could change his self destructive behavior.  It was beyond anything that one could comprehend. He took a few people down with him. All the begging, crying and getting angry could not change it. They asked themselves how could this happen? How did this happen? He couldn't love himself and certainly wasn't capable of loving anyone else. 

Let me tell you this my friends...it's like a loved one dieing. A death. The death of someone you knew, adored, cherished and loved. It's like having the wind knocked out of you...a sucker punch. A devastating hurt that cuts so deep that it NEVER goes away.

Such is the life of an alcoholic...

You try to sabotage what's good because you don't feel worthy of good. You have spent countless hours convincing yourself that you are worthless. When someone sees the good you are quick to deflect and focus on the negative and you go into sabotage mode. You have a lot of unresolved hurt stemming from an event or events in your life. When you feel this hurt you drink it away. Just as a cutter would cut their wrist to release the pain, you use alcohol.  You are unhappy with yourself and you use humor as a mask and to deflect from the real issues. You will avoid talking about your deep seeded issues because the unresolved hurt is too painful to acknowledge and bring to the surface. You get so overwhelmed that you can feel you can barely function and you're running on fumes. You live in a cycle of drinking, avoiding your feelings and negativity. Your pain is slowly destroying your life. 

"Alcoholism is a well documented pathological reaction to unresolved grief."

- DAVID COOK, Psychosocial Issues in the Treatment of Alcoholism 

Small victories and large defeats

I sit here
drunk now.
I am
a series of
small victories
and large defeats
and I am as
amazed
as any other
that
I have gotten
from there to
here
without committing murder
or being
murdered;
without
having ended up in the
madhouse.

as I drink alone
again tonight
my soul despite all the past
agony
thanks all the gods
who were not
there
for me
then.

-Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last