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 know that recovery is a process and no one is perfect, but damn!!! There was an incident at my house this morning where a neighbor threatened to shoot my husband. His mother came over and everything turned out okay. I found out my husband has been more active in his addiction than I thought, but what difference does it make how much he has been using? I knew he was. Anyway, Xanax makes him very hyper and mean. He is even worse when detoxing himself off of them. I just couldn't take another whole day being ruined so I took him to his mother's and got a joint for him. Now what is he supposed to think when I am begging, pleading, screaming and threatening him about drugs and then turn around and actually wish he'd smoke a joint mellow out and shut up? Tonight he has been very quiet and actually told me that he is considering rehab. He has always been against it and closes his ears when it is mentioned. Now he is saying that thinks he is willing to go, but not until tomorrow. We will see. I feel like, after today, I can't say anything one way or another.
It took a lot of courage to post this. I, like you, don't have any magical answers but I hope you will keep coming. Each meeting we do or go to dilutes the disease of alcoholism -- at least to the extent of the effects on us.
:) Maria123
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If I am not for me, who will be? If I am only for myself, then who am I? If not now, when?
So, you made a choice which was not the healthiest of all the possibilities in front of you. This does not take away every right choice you have made in the past, and it does not mean that you will not make more right choices in the future. Personally, my life became so much better when my husband got heavily into crack cocaine. Yes, he was spending more money, and yes, he was drifting further and further out of sight, becoming just a sad shell of the man he used to be, but at least he wasn't violent, he wasn't screaming, he wasn't abusive. I have to admit, I liked it. Sometimes our poor tired nerves just need a break, and sometimes we show that we are not pefect either. Give yourself the same compassion that you are willing to show to others. You deserve it.
You are not a failure. They can make our lives a living H$ll. With even the best intention and the greatest tools we are only human and can only take so much. So you took the easy way out. It is no fun taking the high road all of the times and we win no metals for it, all we can hope for is self esteem and serenity and happiness and yes some peace. Every now and then we all just need a little peace, a break form the chaos and the heck with the cost, because the other price could very well be our sanity.
Alanon gives us tools to make our lives better. Yes we have to use those tools, but we also have to live with day to day trials and human feelings. The greatest tools in the world can only guide us and we all will stray from the road at times.
Don't beat yourself up, you are entitled to some peace and you are only human.
I am a borderline diabetic, I am very careful with my diet and exercise to help keep the disease at bay. It is coming, but I am trying to slow it down (adult onset runs in my family and I habe a bad sugar history with pregnancy's and other times). Every now and then I crave a burger king cheese burger with bacon and the works, and I indulge in it, VERY happily :). The next day I go right back to watching what I eat and exercising. The cheeseburger does not make me a failure, it might not be good for me, but at the time it is really necessary.
I, too, feel like a failure every time my husband fails to come home, or gets drunk and drives on home. He is not abusive, mean or obnoxious, as he usually doesn't drink around us at all. But the look on my daughter's face when she realizes that I know, and am not able to shield her from this pain, makes me feel like there must be something I could do to protect her.
It is the same when she implores me to do something about her grandmother who refuses to eat, in favor of her addiction to anorexia (at 70 years old). She is a mature and worldly child, but she still expects me to have all the answers. She is unswerving in her impatience with her uncle, who has struggled or gotten mired in a myriad of drug addictions over the years. Perhaps her family history makes her less understanding in fear that she will inherit some of the same tendencies.
In the end, I don't have all the answers, very few as it turns out. What I try to model is patience and tolerance for the people involved, but intolerance for the addictions and the ways in which they impact the people around them. Those of us on the outside can't do much when the addicted people in our lives refuse to take the reins and get it under control.
