I was thinking earlier today about the disease of alcoholism and the people that are affected by it.   Not just the alcoholics themselves, but the family and the friends of the alcoholics.  The alcoholic's transformation as they succumb to the disease reflects the transformation that the relatives and friends undergo as their disease progresses.  The alcoholic changes from the person we knew in the beginning of our relationship to a jekyll/hyde person that we no longer respect.  As alanon members, through our own reactions to the alcoholic's disease, do we not also go through our own jekyll/hyde transformation?  In my own experience, caring, loving wife/mother to the angry, fearful woman that was afraid to stand up for herself.

I became angry at the man...the alcoholic in my life...I blamed and shamed and argued with him as if he were a normal sane person able to be reasoned with. In my own insanity I reasoned that I should be able to say the right words, to convince him that what he was doing was wrong, to cure him. But this person was not normal or sane....he was a victim of a disease... a horrible addiction.

The addiction rules the acoholics life.  Yes they have a choice whether to drink or not, but the addiction rules, the disease rules. My own addictions to control, to blame, rage, to manipulate ruled my life until I realized that I had a choice.

I could continue to suffer as the victim of this disease or change my way of thinking. Alanon showed me that I could continue to love the alcoholic and not love the disease....to separate the two. As affected as the alcoholic is by the disease of alcoholism, there is a person inside that needs  compassion and understanding. It didn't mean I  always had to love, live with, or like the person, but it meant I could treat them with respect, and know that they were suffering as I did with my part of the disease.  It meant as the alcoholic has choices to drink or not, I had choices on how to respond to the alcholic.

The Alanon program and the people in it have given me freedom that has no boundaries. At this point in my life I take full responsibility for my recovery and my own part in my disease, and will be forever grateful for this program and my very good friends in it.  SenoraBob