The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
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information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
Intellectually, I get it - addiction is a disease. In the moment though it's nearly impossible for me to see that my spouses addiction(s) are not a choice or personal attack on myself and our children. I feel like I'm making this so impossibly hard on myself by not figuring out a way to really, truly, believe that addiction is a disease. Not just hear the words and see the logic ... I want to be free of the skepticism I hold towards this in my own head. I want to stop hating my spouse. I don't want to look over at him and feel pity, sadness, and disdain all at the same time. If I could truly believe that addiction was a disease I think I'd feel differently about him then I do know. I want to feel compassion for him - but all I can manage to really focus on is how I'm suffering - what the kids have given up that they don't even know they've given up.
Maybe someone can say something that just hits me the right way and helps me see, really see and believe, that my husband is sick.
I can only tell you what helped me to understand alcoholism. I have always thought of it as a mental illness, not that it is defined that way because everyone will have their own way of thinking. I have heard it explained as an obsession or compulsion like gambling. The disease part comes in because of the definition of a disease that "impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms." That does not make it un-treatable or let people off the hook for how it is effecting their family. If someone had diabetes and did not go to the doctor, they would get sicker and could miss work or have mood swings. So, they would still be effecting their families if they did not get treated. Alcoholism is just so intense that not drinking is more frightening for them than drinking. Attending meetings can help you to be around other people like yourself. It is nice to get the support.
-- Edited by shrnp on Tuesday 19th of September 2017 02:13:04 PM
Kay I can totally relate. When my husband was drinking it was so hard for me to wrap my head around that fact that he couldn't just stop. Every time he said he was going to quit or told me he wasn't drinking when in fact he had been was a personal assault against my family. I was so angry that he wasn't a present father for my two young boys. I guess I realized it was in fact a disease and that the addiction had a hold of him when he truly stopped drinking. Then I saw how sick he was, throwing up, shakes, sweats. Later he had to be admitted to the ER so he could detox safely. When I had called the ER to tell them that we were coming in they got him right into a room and hooked up to an IV bag to help hydrate him. Afterwards I talked to one of the ER doctors and they said that A withdrawal is one of the most dangerous withdrawals someone can go through, thus the reason why they rush patients into the ER to get medical help right away. That was eye opening for both me and my husband.
If you aren't already going, I would suggest trying face-to-face meetings. These helped so much when my husband was spiraling out of control. Big hugs to you and sending your positive thoughts and prayers.
Hey Kay - I hear you....I really, really do. I battled with this for a while and I am in both sides of the program - AA & Al-Anon. I had to accept that which I can't intellectualize and just believe it is. I know from personal experience that no right-minded person would live as I lived when active, do what I did when active or hurt who I hurt when I was active. For me, I had always felt removed from people, places, events, etc. and suffered from low self-esteem. When I first got buzzed, I felt normal or as if I truly belonged for the first time in my life.
I spent quite a bit of time chasing that first 'feeling' to never find it again, yet I felt more normal under the influence than when I was not. It was as normal to me as taking a multi-vitamin is for another. Had I not got in trouble with the law and gotten a nudge from a judge, I would not have sought recovery on my own. The pull of the mind-altered state for me was stronger than me --- ever.
It's a cunning disease - like no other. For the drinker, the disease suggests (in spite of all rational proof to the contrary) that perhaps just one/two drinks will be OK. Yet, for an alcoholic, one/two is never enough and once the action starts, it's impossible to stop it. It is physically, psychologically and mentally addictive - those who stay sober work it every day.
All I know is for me to drink today is not an option. From an Al-Anon perspective, I had to set aside my intellect and my ego in the beginning and trust blindly what others said to me. Denial is huge and that's what kept me believing that it was a choice and not a disease. I kept practicing what was suggested - focusing on me and the serenity prayer - and when my mind wondered to them/life/etc. I just redirected back as suggested.
I don't know if this helps or not - keep coming back! There is hope and help in recovery!!
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Practice the PAUSE...Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you are about to react harshly and you will avoid doing and saying things you will later regret. ~~~~ Lori Deschene
I have been in that place. Actually, I oscillate - sometimes I can accept it, and sometimes, I rage against it. It's ultimately the "self-will run riot", as AA says, that gets right into my core and stirs up the anger and hurt. I know that no alcoholic has control once that first drink is taken. It just hurts when an alcoholic chooses to take that first drink. They truly have no idea what they're doing to people, and alcohol does a really good job of hiding it from them. Doesn't mean it doesn't kick everyone else around them's butt.
For me, what I've had to do is specifically pray to understand alcoholism as a disease, and pray that the anger, disdain, fear and hate be removed. Because oh yeah, it has gotten to the pure raging hate stage before. I just don't know how to stop feeding that anger/fear wolf once I start. I guess that's my addiction.
It really helps, when I ask my HP to take it away, and show me what to do. And, I don't know how or why, It does. I just started praying this way a couple of weeks ago, and the relief between now and then is immense. I've been getting really specific, praying each morning and night, listing each thing I'm asking to be taken way ("God, please remove from me anger at _____, please remove from me self-pity, please remove from me disgust, etc, etc, etc). I've also had to ask it to remove my anger with It, because oh yeah, It's been caught up in the rage spiral, too.
I just don't have the wherewithal to do the mental gymnastics to try to force my way into a thinking or feeling a certain way anymore. It's a dang brick wall, and it makes my head hurt. This way of praying, which was suggested to me, has turned out to be my Excedrin.
ETA: I love this board. I just read some of your answers, and it's helping me, too. Thank you for talking about this, kayS.
-- Edited by DellaElle on Tuesday 19th of September 2017 02:38:02 PM
I think for me at least, the contradiction is that although it is a disease, they still can either take responsibility or not take responsibility for it. It's like having diabetes - do you manage it and take your insulin, or do you ignore it and hope it all goes away? And the problem with drinking alcoholics is not that they have alcoholism, but that they have not taken responsibility for it.
Also, accepting that it is a disease can seem as if we have to excuse their actions. The fact is that they are still harmful, whether it's a disease or not. If a diabetic refused to take insulin and drove his car and passed out in a diabetic coma and injured someone, that wouldn't solely be the fault of the disease. There's also personal responsibility in there. And the fact is that someone was hurt, even though the diabetic/drinker didn't intentionally mean it to happen. So we are still entitled to protect ourselves from injury, even if we accept that alcoholism is a disease.
Great Responses MIP family!! I found that working the Steps, especially 4 through 10 helped me to get to the" acceptance of alcoholism as a disease that infected us both. I was then able to feel compassion and empathy for myself as well as my partner and use the tools to make my life liveable.
I , too, had to wrap my head around this...what "normal-healthy" person would want to drink poison and DIE???? like Mattie says about the diabetic describes it best to me.....YES, they have the disease of addiction, and YES, it is incumbent on them to "own it" and therefore take their "insulin" in the form of sobriety, AA, meetings, 12 steps, et al....they are responsible for their recovery.....and the analogy of not taking their insulin and driving a car and perhaps getting into a fatal accident because they didn't take their insulin, yea, they are still liable for the damage they cause...I dont' think they should get any "pass" like the "devil made me do it" does not fly with me....they know they have a disease....they have to take responsibility....sadly, many of them don't....My addict youngest brother, MIA again, on the streets, doing his meth to wake up, heroin to "mellow out" yea, he KNOWS hes an addict, but he gets into a car, (2 years ago) speeds down the street, and T-bones a cop car...if that police officer had been in his car?? he would have been dead...that car was squashed....I still don't think he got his license back...I hope not....hes a stone addict and now , according to folks in CA who see him, has become aggressive and possibly dangerous.........WHAT a waste of a life....I remember b4 all the darkness took him over, he was a math genious...compromised in a lot of ways, mentally because our mother was so bad with her drinking, he was born with fetal alcohol syndrome....so yea, he was compromised and a 2 story fall out of a window, landing on his head, didn't help him.....but he had talent...genius with math, HELL of a salesman, worked in some of the nicest stores and could sell like a bandit, but he tossed it all away doing his drugs and alcohol.....If i were to be brutally honest, I am amazed that he is even still alive if you want to call living on the streets in clothes that havn't seen a clotheswasher in MONTHS, eating out of dumpsters, etc., a life, My deceased sister and I used to talk and she said "ya know, sis, if they find his body, I think it would be a release for him from his own personal hell" and I think big sis was right!! his brain is so messed up from 50 years of drinking and drugging...hes 62 and started on his path downhill when in teenage years....so over 40 years, anyway...and the older one who is my friend is a drinker, still functional, and again...if he didnt' eat like a bear, I think the alcohol would have taken him down more than it has.......
Kay, I struggled with this, too. I had to figure out why it was necessary for me to detach, if this is a disease.
With most physical diseases, it would be OK to make soup for them, fluff their pillows, keep them company, make doctor appointment for them, etc. So I had to think of it as a disease like tuberculosis -- it's not their fault, but it is highly contagious, so the patient has to be separated from other people until the treatment makes the patient no longer contagious. And as others have said, if the patient refuses treatment, then they and others will continue to be in danger. We don't catch alcoholism but we can catch al-anonism, and if we've got it, we have to seek the appropriate treatment for ourselves.
Hi Kay. I wouldn't get too down on yourself. You are in a tough situation and, I think, strong feelings are a natural response. Anger, disgust and even hatred are to be expected. You understand that your husband is not the alcohol and that's good. It might be too much to expect that you won't have any negative reaction when your husband is being nasty towards you or your kids.
If you are able to let it go and not hold onto it letting it turn to resentment that would be a big success.
Wow what a sharing and mahalo to you all for you ESH honest and compassionate which is what turned me off when I first decided to join AFG fellowship and the word Denial had much to do with that along with a total lack of understanding and a personality which at time was safer locked up. At first it was impossible to believe this was a disease of the mind, body, spirit and emotions mainly because it was all about me!! How dare anyone including my alcoholic/addict wife cause me such discomfort and concern and since I didn't know about the did-ease she wasn't what she really was...she was a bitch. Not to offend that was just how I reacted to it. It took me 9 years of program including college courses to "come to understand" and when I was fully awake I was astounded at the disease and what it had done to the lives around me and my own.
My sponsor suggested that I learn everything I could about the disease from as many source that were available and in the end I was a qualified therapist with a position in the ARC...The Alcohol Recovery Center in a major CA hospital assisting all levels of dysfunction including my own. I experienced so many levels of this disease that I lost or gave away every opportunity to deny it again.
The Al-Anon Family Groups and then AA and then MIP has given me the commitment to take my chair and keep my chair in recovery. I don't know of anything so negatively powerful and I was born tuberculic also. Our 12th step and the opportunities it gives us to help others means for some there is a survival chance as long as they listen, learn and practice, practice, practice. Ours is a fatal disease. It kills drinker and non-drinker without prejudice.
I so appreciate this post even if/when my vision gets blurred by tears. (((((hugs)))))
great post. I too still struggle at times with this as well although I think I am doing better. I try to remind myself that no one wakes up in the morning with the intention of getting drunk and causing problems at home. No one rationally chooses that and if my AH could control it I think that he would. THat doesn't mean however that I just passively accept his alcoholic behaviour either. It's hard for me to understand because I can take or leave alcohol. I don't have the compulsion that once I start drinking I have to keep drinking but I see it in my AH. It also helped me to focus on myself. I've learned to apply the Al Anon principals and ideas to my life to make it better for my daughter and I.
My sponsor told me that when she struggled with this she went to open AA meetings and it helped her to hear other stories and readings etc. She could see the alcoholic in her life in those people and their description of their lives.
I came to this acceptance slowly and I think it just takes time so go easy on yourself. I think it's great that you are willing to be open to this idea. Willingness is the start to so many amazing things.
I am sure addicts didn't go to bed as children and PRAY to become an addict..scorned , even shunned by many, hated by their own families and their friends, leaving them left and right, nights in stinking , urine soaked jails, sleeping on sweat soaked cots that stink like hell, then the poverty and not to mention the slow destruction of their bodies, minds and even their spirits....No!!! NO child prays to become THIS is their life
but it happens!!! too often it happens!!! and we , fortunate, non substance addicts, can sit and judge which I have done, many times, and I used to curse them because I am a CoDa for life because of the impact of their actions, but underneath it all, I am GRATEFUL that I am only an Al-anon and an ACA and a CoDA...I'm not in a hospital shaking and having seizures, biting my tongue, suffering from damage to my central nervous system, and also suffering progressive brain damage, not to mention the swollen liver that if not addressed leads to anal bleeding out...I am GRATEFUL that I am not experiencing what has to be the worst hell...
That said, yea, I can feel LOADS of compassion and empathy, even, for these tortured souls who were once viable, productive human beings now reduced to a pile of puke, urine, nerve damage, often times homelessness where they are preyed upon by anyone who may want their shoes or their belt or maybe the necklace around their neck....
Yea, I can feel pity and compassion but will I ever want to be around one , active, again??? not just "no" but "HELL NO" not in a million years...I would rather die alone and poor then to marry one and go through the roller coaster ride they put us on...the never ending instability, insecurity, fear of legal and other troubles that they bring....its sad...I saw a guy driving home tonight from tennis and he was disheveled, kinda "shaky" looking, unkempt, dirty clothes, unbathed for God knows how long and I thought of my brother who still can work now, but what about next year, or 2 years from now as the alcohol like an inexorable curse courses through his body, taking more of his physical, mental, spiritual assets away?? what will become of him??? and would I take him in??? I can't...I can't bring that into my life, into my home because I have enough of a hard time taking care of me...And I put in my time with alcoholics....babysitting my mother while the monster was out looking for more young girls to prey upon...I was trying to keep her sober...yea, what a joke!! she was genious at getting a bottle and then hiding that bottle...in toilet tanks, in holes that a rat would fit into, she wold manage to divvy her bottle into many smaller ones, like the cologn bottles, or the spice bottles in teh kitchen and if she ran out of booze there was always after shave and rubbing alcohol....oh yea, I am an abused, disturbed child trying to keep this cunning alcoholic sober...and when he would come home and find her drunk, I got punished...it was "my fault" that she was drunk...well who TAUGHT her to drink??? HE did...Who force fed his young wife, who was a selfish little girl who wanted to "marry up" at any cost, liquor so he could make her do porno shoots with him?? it wasn't I who caused this...it wasn't I who could control this and I damned sure won't cure it.....
so would I take my brother in??? No!!! I've served my time and I am not going back to have my car keys stolen for that run to the liquor store and maybe an accident in my car or damage to my property from his smoking which I am allergic to anyway....I think about this..what will happen when he can't take care of himself and I think of the sorrow I would feel because I worry about, living alone, whose gonna help ME, the sober one, when I am too old from age adn stress trying to take care of ME, whose gonna be with ME???? so no!! I feel heart wrenching empathy and compassion for the end I see him headed for, but I am powerless...I can barely support me, I cannot support and help him.....IF he lived in the same state, I would , for sure, see him in the hospital if hes lucky enough to die there rather than the streets which many of them do, but empathy has to be accompanied by reality adn common sense.....I know my limitations and I know I just don't have the warewithal to care for a dying alcoholic and he's already told me his liver is swollen and when he was last in hospital for pneumonia, I saw the handwriting on the wall...the clock is ticking!!! the sand in the hour glass is more on the bottom then on the top and the only thing I can do is give him over in step 3...............sad........but thats the reality as I see it......i don't scorn him, shun him, but I do take steps to protect me from the trouble he could bring my way if I let him.....I just don't go there............thank God and Al-anon for boundaries........
