The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
i am an alcoholic in recovery, i just celebrated my 1st year birthday.
i have belonged to MIP for awhile now and often read your posts here on the alanon board. i appreciate your posts very much. At first i was interested in alanon to see the other sides perspective..what i had done to those i love and admire. Today i need you. I have been dating a guy in the program for awhile now, well i guess since october. He went back to work not long after we started dating. His last 2 paydays were spent in the bar. I told him from the beginning that i couldn't date an active addict.. Codependent me gave him another chance, 2ce...sigh...
so here i sit on his 3rd payday wondering where he is, and if he will die this time around. |I am making myself sick thinking about it. I told him the last time that if he did it again we were done. So i am done, yet worried sick about him. |I know about the 3 c's.. i didn't cause it..i can't control it... i can't cure it..or him..whichever, i can't.
So i spent the evening with my girls.. i prayed for him and for the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach to be gone...its not.
The fact that i am an alkie myself.. has me knowing the dangers, the feelings, the i just want to do what i want to do thinking, also the not wanting to feel thing... so sad. He is such a good man, yet obviously not yet done suffering and living in misery and hell. I don't want to live there, with or without him.
There is nothing today that will make me pick up the first one, not him or anyone else. I don't want to worry about him. I put him in my HP hands, yet it doesn't seem to be enough to alleviate my suffering.
Hi Wendy! I too have been on both sides of the fence, both in recovery from my own alcoholism/addictions, and as a loved one (ex-husband, and now oldest daughter).
There's a good reason it's highly suggested to not get involved in a relationship when you're sober for at least a year.
I threw four years of sobriety out the window the first time around because I was dating someone in the program also. He relapsed, and despite everyone's warnings to cut him loose, I refused to listen.
I ended up going down the tubes right along with him.
Today, I know I deserve a chance to be reasonably happy and serene.
Today my own recovery must come first and foremost, and for me, that also means I cannot be directly involved with an active alcoholic.
__________________
"If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience." - Woodrow Wilson
Okay another double on the line for you here. Started in Al-Anon first. This is my prime program. I specifically don't let go of the alcoholics in my life and if I feel they are about to move on I marry them...LOL First I try to teach them how to drink and then I marry them!! The pain I have gone thru trying to "keep" the alcoholic(s) in my life is worse than any hangover I ever got from the bottle and seems to last 100 times longer plus it takes my head and my heart and my emotions, behaviors and total concentration. It doesn't matter that I now know how my family use to feel when I was drinking. That does nothing for me. I didn't come into the Family groups looking for that lesson; I came because I was crazy with no more free space between then and suicide. I have made my apologies and amends to my family, friends and associates who I have hurt before coming into recovery.
Al-Anon has adopted almost word for the word the same 12steps and traditions from AA. We work them to gain and maintain our serenity which we loose by giving ourselves away to the alcoholic and every other person, place or thing we feel needs fixing and can only be fixed by us. Of course I speak only for myself and the similarities twix my story and the ones posted here including yours are sooo dramatically similar.
I see that you made promises to yourself and mentioned them to him and then you went against those promises. Welcome to the family. I married my last alcoholic wife at the same time I was planning to leave her. Figure that one out! What matters here is that we are all in the tub together. We understand where you are at right now even while maybe most of us are not addicted to alcohol the chemical. We know what it's like to be addicted to a person with a chemical addiction (or a way of living different than our morals and values and expectations) and we know how almost impossible it is to correct that problem, mistake, situation (pick a discription) and go on with our lives in some sort of orderly managable direction.
You are in the right place. I was sober 9 years before getting into AA. I got into AA after an assessment that said if I drank again I would die. I got in AA when I was free of my alcoholic wife and most of the people in my AA district I knew almost personally because I was also a substance abuse therapist. Strange kinda and my HP works that way. I stay put where He places me until He leads me elsewhere.
In AA I have learned to lay off of the alcohol. In Al-Anon I have learned to lay off of the alcoholic. Same method is used; "Trust God, clean house, help others." I learned here not to place myself between the alcoholic and the pavement. In other words not to be a pillow between her and her bottom. Trusting HP doesn't mean that for sure the alcoholic's next drink will be the last one; it could be and then it could be the one that crashes the alcoholic right into the palms of his HP.
If you still have a good memory use it to fortify your compassion and hope and to help you step aside so that your alcoholic can reach his HP.
Wendy: I have not drunk anything at all for more than 6 years. I did not pick "up" over the A nevertheless my behaviors were totally out there. I was obsessed, depressed, over reliant on him, in denial, angry, in grief and much more. For me personally I cannot speak about anyone else those behaviors to the extent I took them to was as bad for me as picking "up".
I am glad I did not pick up but I am very very sad that I took myself to such limits and almost died from it.
Welcome Wendy. I personally think it is good when an A wants to understand the others they have affected as long as they don't use it to beat themselves over the head with guilt.
As you have realized, you are qualified to be here and we are glad to have you. My suggestion is to get out your books and start working those steps again. Find a f2f Alanon meeting if you can. They will have the Alanon CAL material that you need now. Another good book to start out with is Melody Beaties' Codependent No More. She was also an A and codependent. And keep coming back here.
In recovery,
__________________
~Jen~
"When you come to the edge of all you know you must believe in one of two things... there will be earth on which to stand or you will be given wings." ~Unknown
