Yes, he is not doing this 'to you'. If he was once a good and loving dad and grandfather, then you can be sure that this hurts him. It becomes yet another reason for him to drink, in fact. When they are sober, they realize what they have done to themselves and to those they love. They can't face the guilt, and so get drunk as fast as possible, so they don't have to feel it. Most A's have been dealing with negative emotion this way for their whole lives - they have an enormous backlog of pain and anger and guilt. In many ways this is what keeps them from sobering up - they know they will have to deal with this emotion, and can't imagine how it will be possible without the help of drink.


I used to try to make my husband feel guilty for what his drinking was doing to our family. In fact, I used to do stupid thigns to hurt myself, just to show him that it was making me crazy, jsut to show him how out of control our lives were. This always backfired.
A normal person deals with guilt by doing what they can to repair the damage, and then trying not to repeat the offending behaviour. An A deals with guilt by finding someone else to blame, so they don't have to feel guilty, and by getting drunk, so they don't have to face the fact that their version of events doesn''t really hold water. whatever I did to make him feel guilty was just feeding his self loathing, and keeping the cycle going.

You have broken off contact with your dad to protect yourself, and to protect your children. That is a good and reasonable step to take, if you felt it was necessary. If you are also doing this to in some way punish him, or shock him into sobering up, or in any way influence HIS behaviour, then please understand that it probably won't work the way you planned. That doesn't mean that you can't get the benefits of what you did to take care of yourself. You don't have to feel that you have abandoned your dad - instead you have given him over to his Higher Power, who can take better care of him than you can.