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.
Todays reading is about what brings us to Al-Anon in the first place, and what we might learn about ourselves once we are here. The writer describes coming to the program because of her husbands drinking. What she had trouble understanding once there, was why she was answering yes to all the questions about having grown up with a problem drinker when her own parents were not alcoholics. Over time, she learned that her parents were raised by alcoholics, and therefore exhibited behaviors of adult children of As. While her parents had chosen not to drink, they also did not choose recovery, and many of their behaviors and attitudes were unhealthy and passed to the next generation. Knowing this, the writer chose to put her energy toward the slogan let it begin with me and began work to help her own family experience a better way of life.
I came to this program for (what I thought) was the problem drinking of one person, but like the writer, once I began examining my family with a new awareness, saw that we have problem drinkers and alcoholism in past generations and in present time. Some might say that those of us who have alcoholism even in the very distant past may wind up in relationships with As as some way of trying to fix that issue. Even if we choose not to drink, or our parents did not, the insidious nature of the disease will reach across generations if untreated. Todays Thought for the Day uses the strong and accurate comparison of living without a recovery program to a person who is a carrier of a disease:
Before Al-Anon I was a carrier of this disease. Living the Al-Anon program immunized me from its effects and helps prevent me from spreading the devastation.
When I got married, my MIL told me that my (now ex)H had two generations of men behind him who were alcoholics.
Now I know that I should have run as fast as I could out the door. But hindsight is what it is.
One of the things I love about Al-anon is that it helps us to break the cycle of being a family-member of the disease. I now know that my former MIL and former grandmother-in-law were all ensnared by the disease. They lived in a time when it was more shameful to break the cycle than it was to keep it hidden.
