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 really don't know what to do. my friend won't try aa. she has all sorts of denialist reasons why not to go. i recently lost a family member (a close one) to alcoholism. i feel as if i have a lot of regrets about that which i know is irrational. but i want to try with this friend, who has kids etc. many sober friends are saying, cut her off. any thoughts/advice? it is indeed affecting me horribly. i have had to really confront her and tell her some very very painful truths. and i feel guilty for making her feel so badly but i feel like SOMEONE has to tell her the truth. she is white knuckling and thinks she's made 'great strides' but is just white knuckling and relapses every few months.
It is so admirable that you care so much about your friend that you would seek out advice for them! Welcome to MIP! I must say that Alcoholism is a disease that does not have a cure, the A has to chose on their own to stop the madness, no one can do it for them. You can either detach with love and empathy, which basically is to accept and love them in spite of the disease, or remove yourself from their lives entirely, like many of your sober friends have done, but you will never make them stop drinking with confrontation. These An alan-non acronyms and sayings may help you to understand:
LOVE: Let Others Voluntarily Evolve
Also this ... On Helping, Fixing and Controlling:
HelpingIm disrespecting their ability to do it themselves.
Fixing, Im saying that they are broken,
ServingI am just showing up to listen.
I remove the other persons dignity if I try to make their decisions for them
I will pray for you and your friend ... Please come back and chat anytime you need to, you are not alone!
__________________
"Forgiveness doesn't excuse bad behavior, but it
does prevent bad behavior from destroying your heart". ~ unknown
SO helpful thank you!!!! you know when kids are involved - and your kid considers them 'cousins', you feel compelled to fix. also with what happened with my fam member, i am scared of not doing enough. but i know the drill. i just have to follow it. sigh. THANK YOU
can you tell me what you mean by detach with love and empathy? i am def. pushing AA so hard. and saying that with my own history this is not healthy for me at all. if you have any advice it's much appreciated.
also i intervened with a friend before. she wasn't ready. it happened again (w/others) and she is clean now for years. so i am not convinced that i should completely avoid confronting.
"My freedom and independence do not depend
on any acts of defiance or confrontation.
They depend on my own attitude and feelings.
If I am always reacting then I an never free."
Also, Step 4 helps us learn that the 4 M's are not a productive way to cope with an "A":
Martyrdom
Manipulating
Managing
Mothering
How do/did I try to manipulate others?
Setting up a situation
passive/agressive behavior
How do/did I try to manage and control my live and the lives of those around me?
How have I taken on responsibilities that were not mine?
Have I ever been called a control freak?
How do/did I mother others by cleaning up their problems, by doing things for them, etc?
How have I played the martyr. What did I hope to gain?
By making an Inventory I recognized my 4 M behaviors.
Loving detachment is the result of recognizing my 4 M behaviors.
In order to expedite self care and attain peace, serenity and dignity.
Hope this helps you and your friend as well!
__________________
"Forgiveness doesn't excuse bad behavior, but it
does prevent bad behavior from destroying your heart". ~ unknown
I also welcome you to MIP. I applaud your 12 years and admire your desire to help your friend. As you know, Alcoholism is cunning, baffling, powerful and progressive.
I have a close friend who also doesn't believe in 'AA' and she has 5 kids (husband passed).....Long story short, I was able to set boundaries with her (we only hang during the week, day-time) and made sure that all 5 kids have my number (so they can call if they need help). I love her and them just like family and over the years, I've gotten calls from the kids, from the school - etc. - everyone knew I was her Plan B...
So - I found a way to support the family members in spite of the disease. I offer just as an example of how you can provide support without enabling.
Boundaries are intended to protect you not punish them. Just think about this as you move forward.
As Debb says, keep coming back - ask questions, share - we're here and you are not alone!!
__________________
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
Hi ruth, you certainly are in the right place, so glad you are reaching out to AlAnon. Reading your words of pain, concern, and fear regarding your friend reminds me of how I felt before I found AlAnon and began focusing on incorporating the 12 steps and principles in my own life, rather than on others'.
AlAnon gives us this choice: continue our efforts to control the uncontrollable, alcohol, to the point that our own life is unmanageable, or: accept the basic tenants of the program, acknowledge that we cannot control alcohol or others and focus on improving our own behavior and serenity.
While your efforts are well intended, they are not enough to effect lasting change in an A's behavior. Whether they make a change is determined only by their own decisions, efforts, and path that they travel with their higher power.
Your experience and knowledge of the Steps and your own program will serve you well as you reflect on the implications of Steps 1 and 2 and ponder what truly is the best way to help your friend. AlAnon meetings and readings are incredible resources that remind us that the best thing we can do is remind them of our love for them, focus our efforts on our own behavior, and step back to allow them to find their own way and develop a program that works for them.
There are several recent threads on this forum dealing with detaching with love that are very helpful, drawing from program literature to guide us in showing the A that we care without trying to take over a task that is not ours to assume. Face to face AlAnon meetings are also outstanding places to others who understand your concern and have found ways to be truly helpful to those struggling with A in their lives.
I wish you the best in your efforts and hope you are able to find strength in the basic principals of the Program that offer strength, hope, and serenity to those of us who have turned to AlAnon when nothing else would work. Hang in there, and keep coming back...
__________________
Paul
"...when we try to control others, we lose the ability to manage our own lives." - Paths to Recovery
Ruth....If you speak your truth in a caring way, that's the best you can do. I would have a hard time in your shoes too. Being sober in AA, I know it works and would hate to see someone close to me struggle with all the denial and BS while claiming they wanted to get sober. I would probably tell it to them straight up, but then I would have to detach if they didn't listen or continued to go on in a way that was half-assed or "white knuckling." Pretty much the same way I would detach or cut of a sponsee that didn't follow any suggestions. Make sense? Alanon meetings could help you too...just to deal with the powerlessness over her disease.
thank you all so so much for taking the time to reply. i was devastated only 8 months ago with a sister who i talked to many times a day but never saw. there were occasional times where i thought she might be drinking a little bit to ease the pain of a bad family situation but never in my wildest imagination did i think she would go into liver failure and die, leaving my nephew motherless. despite knowing all i know about the disease, i am left with so so many regrets. she could have lived if i had been more aggressive in forcing her to get to a hospital. (again i know that sober-speaking i have no responsibility here. but if this happened to you, i guarantee you would feel as i do my friend here knows all this. i told her soon after this with my sister that i could NOT go through this with a friend i view as close as i do a blood sister. i already knew at the time that she was relapsing - not constantly but even one relapse with her is enough to cause a lot of harm. (it's a white knuckle, then binge profile.) i love her kids too. so the detach is very very hard, thinking i will live with regrets like i have now with my sister. but as my husband said, she just isn't ready to accept it. i can't change that. i can say whatever and try to accept that as doing what i could do.
How do you know you could have gotten her to go to the hospital? I think it's unfair of you to put regrets on yourself for actions another person was responsible for. In Al Anon, talk about forgiveness is a huge deal, and often we talk about having to forgive the alcoholic, but sometimes we have to be able to forgive ourselves. In fact, sometimes we have to realize that there is nothing to forgive, it's an unfair burden we place on ourselves, and with death we tend to just take it on, since we know the other person isn't there to take this burden. Sometimes things just are.
Can you get to some face to face meetings to help with this? This understanding of what you own and what you can't possibly own? Knowing what you own and don't can relieve a lot of guilt.
oh yes i mean, intellectually and sober-speaking this is what everyone will tell you. and i know this to be true but it's only been 8 months. with a loss this dramatic/sudden plus PREVENTABLE, i am def. struggling to move on from the what-if's. but her shame caused her to make a fatal mistake - not going in when she should have.
i think some of the meetings have actually not been that helpful because sometimes people get SO sober-minded they can't accept a natural reaction to dramatic loss, which of course is regret. my psychiatrist at least will say, you are having a NORMAL reaction, just try to remember that your head and heart need to reconnect and work on that.
i think, however, that the regrets in this sudden death are causing me to be too over-involved in my friend's alcohol abuse. i know i need to back away but it's this previous trauma that is causing me to be over-involved.
Aloha Ruth S and welcome to the board and family....You have (wow) already received a lot of feed back from the board all of it helpful. Start building a MIP?Al-Anon program on it. Last evening I took an AA member to my Al-Anon Home Group. I am a double (both programs) and he is having Family of the alcoholic issues. We had spoken in the past and he created the desire to be in the rooms to understand how the Al-Anon member handles their side of the disease. He was amazed and would have stayed another hour however we get recovery in steps and little bites...he will have to be patient also.
You have had some tragedy with this disease in the demise of friends and family and you have had some great successes...welcome to the real world. Please don't use the tragedies to project the future for your friends and family still not sober. We can only live in this one day at a time and cannot or ought not live in the past or future. Just for Today is a thought force for both programs and it keeps us real. Acceptance (page 449 of the 3rd edition of AA/BB) was helpful to both of my programs...try reviewing that lesson by Dr. Bob and see what it does for your attitude. Last nights Al-Anon meeting was on "Powerlessness" and your post which you put on this board was spoken to many times by the fellowship of the Wednesday Night Turning Point AFG meeting. We are all powerless...with a Higher Power which can lead us to Sanity and make the decision daily to allow it to do so.
Welcome and keep coming back. Love and Peace and best wishes to your dear alcoholic friend. ((((Hugs))))
ruth, I like what your psychologist has to say. Everything in life is a process, and you are right, well wishers sometimes can't see why you aren't already at the end of the process when you are doing the healthy thing which is healing instead of putting a tourniquet on it and ignoring it. Good for you.
Just keep coming back, we are all healing from something, and healing together is better!
Thanks for sharing! Keep coming back and sharing more whenever you are so inclined.
We're all here to listen and lots of people have very interesting perspectives.
Debb--is detach seriously a mnemonic? I just don't recognizing it as a mnemonic from
my F2F Al-Anon meetings or from _How Al-Anon Works_, which is why I ask.
I've been with an AA for 2 years at this point. I've done a lot of research, and in all honesty, there are other programs that seem to be viable as well. Just because someone is not capable or interested in AA doesn't mean you can't suggest some alternatives. And that being said, attraction not promotion is the best way to involve someone in a program. Being a good role model, or a good, whole person yourself is the best way to get someone involved in a program. Looking at you and seeing you thrive and overcome your problems speaks volumes compared to saying "you should do this." Someone's gotta want the help to take the help or to actually use the help.
Separate, too, what you know and love about her from her disease to the best of your ability. I know that's hard, but if she's drunk you don't have to hang around, and if she's not and being negative you can just be happy and positive with yourself. No one else can really impact your behavior more than you can...I guess, if that makes sense.
