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I have been reading the board for a while. I thought I would start posting. I have been attending F2F Al anon meetings for a couple of months now. I feel like I am just getting my feet wet. I have been married to my AH for 11 years. My father and step mother are active alcoholics and my step father was an alcoholic and I lived with him growing up. It took me a while to figure out my AH was an alcoholic. And that Alcohol was playing such a big role in my crazy insane life. This is just a brief example but I used to take out the recycling every few days. Pack it up and hear the beer cans crunching in it and never think twice. I could tell you that my H and I were having problems. That he had times or moments when he was so nasty, behaved erratically, and was completely irrational. I would be perplexed by why he would be this way one day and another day he would be different. All the while packing up those bags for the recycling with the beer cans crunching with the visual evidence right under my nose. I guess I just didn't want to see it. And one day we had one of the worst events we ever had and he had been the most intoxicated I had ever seen him and it all clicked. It's like I woke up. It was staggering to think I didn't see it before. I guess I never thought he had a problem with alcohol because he maintained a high level job, continued to maintain his parenting responsibilities etc. So to me the next logical step was to tell him what the problem was. You know, I had to explain it properly and then he would get it and he would stop and all would be well. Yeah that didn't happen so much lol. So I went to counselling because I thought I wanted to leave and I wanted to talk it out with someone else. And the counsellor recommended some reading on codependency and then recommended AlAnon and that did wonders for me. So here I am. I go to meetings weekly. I use the slogans. I work on detachment with my AH (this has worked wonders for me). I've been wrestling with the first step. It seems so simple but it really isn't. My AH will do a lot better for a while and cut back (he refuses to stop completely). And I will get hopeful that everything is sorted out and then he drinks again and I feel devastated. And I know I have to stop focusing on it/him and focus on myself. I know I will never win over alcohol. But it sucks that I never will. I came home from an alanon meeting one night to find him passed out in bed. So I went down to that recycling bin and I found it full of empties. And I stared at them for a while and tried to contemplate the fact that I am powerless. I am completely powerless over those stupid cans of beer. And then it hit me that I was always powerless. MY step mother was horrible to me and I always thought that if I behaved better, if I was quieter and went unnoticed if I just did something differently she would be nice to me. Logically I knew that wasn't true but that night I really felt it to be true. I realized that no matter what I did or didn't do as a kid she would have been the same. And that was kind of a relief. I felt like a weight had been lifted. I could also see that I have no
Hi KT Welcome To MIP. I am so glad that you found us and shared from your heart. It certainly sounds as if you moved out of denial and into to program very nicely. I too found that I denied reality for a long time because I had a different definition of alcoholism and viewed it as a shameful condition .
I too was so relieved when I walked in the rooms of Al-Anon, and alcoholism was explained to me is a disease over which I was powerless. I love how you looked at the recycle bin and the beer cans and tried to get a grasp on the first step and being powerless.
It is a process and then one day we discover that "acceptance "has taken over and although we are powerless, we are not helpless. The freedom that comes from this awareness is quite remarkable. I was also pleased that you are also able to process your childhood experience with your stepmother and have that pain lifted as well.
Al-Anon face-to-face meetings saved my life and I'm glad that you are attending. Please keep coming back here and sharing your powerful ESH
KT2015 - I too welcome you to MIP - glad you found us and glad you joined us...
So glad you've already found Al-Anon and are attending meetings. This program has given me a completely different way to live, act and react and I am very grateful for what I've learned and how I've been able grow up a bit.
May you find peace and strength here too! We are all miracles in progress and you've just joined the best extended family possible!
Keep coming back - glad to have you here!
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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 KT, it is nice to meet you. I really relate to some of the things you wrote.
Like you, I started with the assumption that "I had to explain it properly and then he would get it and he would stop and all would be well." I thought a lot about how to get his attention and get my point across so he would understand what his drinking was doing to me, agree to stop drinking, and then I would feel better. After practicing Alanon for quite a while, it finally began to sink in that I was powerless over those bottles of wine or gin (that's what it was in my house).
What I have realized recently is this: Even if my wish had come true, and he understood my point of view and stopped drinking ... there is no guarantee that I would feel better. It is very likely that I would still always be hypervigilant, waiting for the next shoe to drop, wondering when the next bad thing would happen -- especially now that I know relapses are common.
What he did or did not do could not "cure" me. The only cure for my disease is a change of my perspective. One of the Alanon readings at the meeting says, "Changed attitudes can aid recovery." That means changing my attitude, not someone else's. It has taken me quite a while, baby-step by baby-step, to understand this. I can only make myself feel better by changing how I think, which may change how I behave, which may then change how I feel. With more than a year in Alanon, I am still learning this simple concept.
Hello KT, welcome to MIP. Your story touched my heart.
I'm so glad you felt that weight life as you realised that no matter what you did your step mother would have done what she was going to do. I can not imagine what it means to be a child in an alcoholic environment, but for different reasons I do understand those feelings that you have described. My imagination makes me think that it is an impossible scenario for a child to figure out and I think that the child in me would have taken on much more responsibility than she deserved.
I have grieved over elements in my past and it has helped me to understand my own needs better. I have also tried to focus on good things as well. As my grieving passed I came to learn that I have no control over the behaviour of the alcoholics in my life and, (here is the good part), I started to realise that now that I can acknowledge that I'm a grown up, (it has taken fifty plus years!!) others have no control over my choices either, unless I choose to allow it. That feels empowering to me. I have started to use these feelings to shape my own life - forgiving myself and bringing positives into my life. It is quite a journey isn't it?!!
Things can, and will, change. As Freetime says, welcome aboard!
