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.
When I met my husband, we were both in AA. He was there for cocaine and I was there because I figured if you came from a family like mine, you would eventually BECOME alcoholic. And AA is an little bit like a hard-luck club - I loved the members of my family who were sober, but unless you were fully a part of the AA world, there was not much they wanted to do with you. My parents had died by that time, I had a bio mom left and I was going into AA to be with her.
My husband and I enjoyed years in AA, but started to travel to Europe, Australia and Asia for work. We began with wine for dinner.
Both curious, we didn't know where it would take us. I had never really drank in my life, so I tested my boundaries. They are small, I have no tolerance or desire to be drunk. His, were bigger - and bigger - and bigger. It was a shock - I know it shouldn't have been - but it was.
one day he walked out of his garage - and it was like a stranger came up my porch. I'll never forget how his face was on his body - but it was a person i had never met.
This stranger came to visit more and more.
For me, it began with great loneliness. He was distracted, never present and detached from me emotionally. It felt like I was drifting on a boat in the ocean waiting for the next wave to drown me.
The universe gave me all the changes at the same time. My mother's devastating cancer and death, death of my animals on the farm (we run a rehab facility and had an enormous number of animals hit their old age at the same time), my adoption issues after my bio mom died, my dog got sick. really - my life looked like a really tacky country and western song.
meanwhile, my husband descended into something I couldn't find him in anymore. He was disappearing, and what was replacing him was something I wouldn't even have a coffee with never mind marry.
I began going to Alanson many years ago. It did not have the same poignancy as AA - the meetings were small and I didn't understand why many of the women that i met were staying with their abusive spouses. I got a sponsor to work the steps with. We focused on my powerlessness.
well here's the problem with that - as a person raised with BUNCHES of alcoholics, someone who had been sexually molested, hidden away - all the terrible things that could happen to a kid - POWERLESSNESS was not a concept I was unfamiliar with. What i needed was POWER - my OWN power. Alanon taught me that power comes from my "Higher Power"
OK here's where we start to talk.
My higher power is not a creation outside of me. Higher power is not separate from me. IT IS ME. and you. and them.
Intuition - that's what happens when higher power talks through your consciousness. Meditation is the listening, praying is the "asking" - although I am very careful what i ask for (mostly just expressions of gratitude) because anything I say in earnest happens nearly IMMEDIATELY.
For three years I went into quiet meditation. I stopped telling people all my problems (this is never a good idea), I stopped performing publicly (I am a musician) and I focused inwards.
After I stopped doing AA (I missed it, but I felt lika a liar saying I was abn alcoholic, and a little pathetic going to AA so my family would "like me more"...oy. - I decided to focus on the last three steps with great diligence. I studied meditation practices with teachers and practitioners of mindfulness. I understand many things now just because I have been taught to sit still long enough to listen to myself and watch the hilarious insanity my mind can create.
Learning how to be - with myself - without always thinking about my AH, or living in fear (turning it over and over and over) - brought me to having a place of my own, friends of my own, and a new job I love. The universe just kept giving me what i needed.
in fact - I see in hindsight that EVERYTHING I had - even the terrible terrible things - were useful. Good somehow. Contributed to who I am.
This concept helps with resentment.
I am back in Al-Anon active again. it's like that for me - it comes in and out, but I am always in some way using the steps, every day, in everything I do.
I don't need to know where I am powerless right now, except to be reminded that i can only govern myself and my own decisions.
I read a woman on our message board the other day, talking about how she isn't sure how to address the actual ISSUE of the drinking with herb huabdn. Allot of the advice she got was "take care of yourself, put you first, don't ask him questions, mind your own business". This is not the kind of relationship i want to have.
This "I do my own thing, and he can drink or do meetings, that's none of my business" attitude is not a partnership. Not the jkind of partnership for me anyways.
So, I tell him everything. I keep myself in my own business, and we work it out - together.
Detachment yes from his emotions...but not from him. not from my relationship.
I think maybe detachment with love - is an oxymoron.
I will be present - without attachment,. Hows that?
and if we don't work it out together, I have an apartment, a job, friends, a life. I have arranged my situation so I will not feel imprisoned or abandoned. I am no one's victim.
You may not like me. I'm not big on towing th party line. I did that. It wasn't great. I don't like slogans and although I do believe 12 step programs have the ability to heal people - they need to be current.
Meaning...what we understand about ourselves, God, the universe and our connections to one another are VERY DIFFERENT from what Lois understood and created through bills inspiration writing the manual "big book" or AA - (found while he was doing LSD trials for bi-polar in the 1930's by the way...)
I remember in AA always trying to say the things you wanted me to hear so that you would accept me and I* would feel like I belonged somewhere - anywhere.
But I definitely belong in al-anon. Oh brother.
he goes to meetings now 5 nights a week.it is still lonely (without him because of booze or without him because of meetings...) but that's better than the alternative.
I am incredibly happy to be home and back on my farm. I have an alternative bedroom in case he slips, and an apartment still in case i need more distance. It will take time to rebuild.
This may sound funny to you, but for all the folks who keep getting the same results like I was - they told me if nothing changes nothing changes.
so I changed.
now WE are together on this journey again - and when he and I get "together" on something - it is a magical event! We are powerful and full of love. We have massive potential as a team to do good things for the world. and frankly, its a big mess out there and there is only so much time we can spend on our "personality issues" - there is a bigger picture and the 12th step is the exact right idea. (the steps are the most brilliant idea IMHO)
Probably not the healthiest share - but we don't come here cause we are all so well eh? :)
Hi Rain Thanks for sharing your journey and the tools that worked for you. I believe that program is a living organism , with no leaders and as such we are governed by traditions instead of rules. This being a fellowship of equals we do not give advise but offer our ESH in order to solve our common problems.
The disease of alcoholism is indeed cunning and powerful and although alanon meetings may not appear to be as" exciting as AA meetings ", we express our disease in a different manner. Many abandon themselves and focus attention entirely on others believing that if we "Fix"another our life will be perfect. Alanon tools encourage us to trust a Higher Power, and keep the focus on ourselves. Defining HP is an individual manner and it is suggested that each member i finds what works for them.
Since this is an individual"come as you are program" each participant is requested to take what they like and leave the rest. Leaving the rest simply implies that we not judge or critique any tool that another finds helpful. We are encouraged to simply pick up the tools and share our ESH with using them.
I am happy you found alanon so helpful. I too have witnessed the "Stranger" who surfaces while living with the disease and although it is unsettling, alanon tools of detachment and focusing on myself worked wonders.
God!!! what a suggestion...be yourself. You cannot imagine the personalities I have displayed as a child of our disease. I didn't know who I was so I made stuff up. I drank to excess and had many problems with those I drank with. My name was an alteration of it's original form and I could do insanity professionally if asked. I am a double a member of Al-Anon and AA; Al-Anon first. I married the women I drank with and couldn't teach them how to do it right. I had an alcoholic sponsor; my cousin who tried to teach me right and that didn't work because it almost killed me and then it did kill him. I was the stranger even to myself how I survived until I reached the program is truly a miracle. I entered AA after 9 years of being chemical free in Al-Anon and I did because I know my disease is active even when I do not drink...I have had many compulsions to drinking and use in the last 37 years of sobriety which I have inspected longer than a non-addicted person would have and to non-sane ends. This disease is truly cunning, powerful and baffling and I do no deny or question that any longer..."Acceptance is the solution to all of our problems". I was born and raise in this disease, nurtured by children and parents of alcoholism and treated in horrible ways which can only be understood because of its presence in my (our) life. I use the past as I know it and as other members can repeat it with me so that I can nod my head in acceptance and truth and to help me remember that our disease "can never be cured...only arrested by total abstinence and that it is progressive always gaining height and weight and strength that I might decide to come back". Good God "Hard Cola? Hard Orange Drink"!!!!??? I am willing my sobriety over to my grand and great grand children.
One of the early miracles Al-Anon gave me was the thought force "consider the similarities and not the differences" between the experiences in the stories in the rooms. I came to understand. ((((hugs))))
-- Edited by Jerry F on Monday 6th of June 2016 01:48:10 PM
Jerry - you had me rolling on the floor. well done! Laughter is far away tonight - my husband is at an AA meeting while I sit here waiting for the phone to ring as my brother is dying.
Yup...it's just s s**sorm time. I can take it. ;)
And I'll tell you what - I am in no mood to mess around with my program. I am in "black belt" 12 step mode - but without the layer of bs I had previous applied to it.
Thanks for helping me see through it.
Now throw me a prayer cause its gonne be a tough night
(we may have just written a song here. ;)
God!!! what a suggestion...be yourself. You cannot imagine the personalities I have displayed as a child of our disease. I didn't know who I was so I made stuff up. I drank to excess and had many problems with those I drank with. My name was an alteration of it's original form and I could do insanity professionally if asked. I am a double a member of Al-Anon and AA; Al-Anon first. I married the women I drank with and couldn't teach them how to do it right. I had an alcoholic sponsor; my cousin who tried to teach me right and that didn't work because it almost killed me and then it did kill him. I was the stranger even to myself how I survived until I reached the program is truly a miracle. I entered AA after 9 years of being chemical free in Al-Anon and I did because I know my disease is active even when I do not drink...I have had many compulsions to drinking and use in the last 37 years of sobriety which I have inspected longer than a non-addicted person would have and to non-sane ends. This disease is truly cunning, powerful and baffling and I do no deny or question that any longer..."Acceptance is the solution to all of our problems". I was born and raise in this disease, nurtured by children and parents of alcoholism and treated in horrible ways which can only be understood because of its presence in my (our) life. I use the past as I know it and as other members can repeat it with me so that I can nod my head in acceptance and truth and to help me remember that our disease "can never be cured...only arrested by total abstinence and that it is progressive always gaining height and weight and strength that I might decide to come back". Good God "Hard Cola? Hard Orange Drink"!!!!??? I am willing my sobriety over to my grand and great grand children.
One of the early miracles Al-Anon gave me was the thought force "consider the similarities and not the differences" between the experiences in the stories in the rooms. I came to understand. ((((hugs))))
-- Edited by Jerry F on Monday 6th of June 2016 01:48:10 PM
-- Edited by hotrod on Tuesday 7th of June 2016 06:46:23 PM
Hi Rain Thanks for sharing your journey and the tools that worked for you. I believe that program is a living organism , with no leaders and as such we are governed by traditions instead of rules. This being a fellowship of equals we do not give advise but offer our ESH in order to solve our common problems.
The disease of alcoholism is indeed cunning and powerful and although alanon meetings may not appear to be as" exciting as AA meetings ", we express our disease in a different manner. Many abandon themselves and focus attention entirely on others believing that if we "Fix"another our life will be perfect. Alanon tools encourage us to trust a Higher Power, and keep the focus on ourselves. Defining HP is an individual manner and it is suggested that each member i finds what works for them.
Since this is an individual"come as you are program" each participant is requested to take what they like and leave the rest. Leaving the rest simply implies that we not judge or critique any tool that another finds helpful. We are encouraged to simply pick up the tools and share our ESH with using them.
I am happy you found alanon so helpful. I too have witnessed the "Stranger" who surfaces while living with the disease and although it is unsettling, alanon tools of detachment and focusing on myself worked wonders.
your words remind me of what my mother would say - she was 28 years sober when she passed away. Full of love and light and wisdom.
