Challenges in the Alcoholic Family
When does “normal” drinking begin to cross the line? AA: Alcoholics Anonymous has a list of questions about drinking habits. A yes answer to more than 4 or more questions indicates a problem with alcohol.
1 – Have you ever decided to stop drinking for a week or so, but only lasted for a couple of days?
2 – Do you wish people would mind their own business about your drinking – stop telling you what to do?
3 – Have you ever switched from one kind of drink to another in the hope that this would keep you from getting drunk?
4 – Have you had to have an eye-opener upon awakening during the past year?
5 – Do you envy people who can drink without getting into trouble?
6 – Have you had problems connected with drinking during the past year?
7 – Has your drinking caused trouble at home?
8 – Do you ever try to get “extra” drinks at a party because you do not get enough?
9 – Do you tell yourself you can stop drinking any time you want to, even though you keep getting drunk when you don’t mean to?
10 – Have you missed days of work or school because of drinking?
11 – Do you have “blackouts”?
12 – Have you ever felt that your life would be better if you did not drink?
In my links area you will find more information that can help you decide if a family member needs help.
The alcoholic family is a dysfunctional unit. Everyone has an assigned role, keyed to how each individual reacts to the stress. One child may be the “rescuer”. Their role is to keep family peace, save the alcoholic from hurting himself and keep the family intact. Often they are obsessive about keeping things in order, and live with an enormous sense of responsibility. School activities and friendships fall by the wayside, because these miniature adults don’t have the time or energy for anything else, but saving their family from harm.
Another child retreats from the whole situation. Their role is sweep it under the carpet, don’t hear it or see it.. If confronted with the truth of a family members drinking, this child will become very angry, and refuse to deal with it.. This behavior carries over into adulthood.
Some children constantly lash out in rage and fury at the drunken parent. Using sarcasm and outright cruelty to help ease the hurt and betrayal they feel. This child has no problem in acknowledging the alcoholism ,and appears to take great pleasure in public denouncement of the offending parent.
Why are these roles necessary? Look what children of alcoholics face, often on a daily basis:
Parental Unemployment
Abuse: Both sexual and physical
Neglect: Even meals are often forgotten
Homelessness in some cases
Loss of a parent due to jail or hospital confinement
Humiliation
Degradation
Isolation
Imagine coming home and finding your parent passed out in a pool of vomit. The place reeks of stale booze. Mom may still be in her nightclothes, filthy and stained. Half empty bottles and glasses everywhere. There is no dinner, no food, because Mom needed the booze more. The phones may be ripped out of walls, furniture may be broken. A new “uncle” is passed out in your Mom’s bed. You don’t dare empty anything out or clean, for fear of waking her up. Hungry, tired and scared you go to your room and cry.
Imagine Daddy, the life of every party, coming in and beating Mom half to death over an imagined slight. Or sitting in a chair, complaining about the lousy breaks he’s gotten, as he tries justifying the loss of yet another job. Disheveled, drunk, Mr. Life of the Party takes off his belt and beats your brother for smarting off to him. You go to your room and cry.
And try if you will, to imagine being born, marked by facial, neurological and speech defects, because your parent(s) loved booze more than they loved you, as you struggled to develop in the womb. A child born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome bears these visible disabilities for life.
These children live lives of chaos and insecurity. Never knowing what they might find when they get home, many drop out of school to better control their environments. Tired of having Dad or Mom make inappropriate and humiliating comments to friends, these children are often isolated from their peers. Their most basic needs aren’t met: feeding, clothing, medical care or even shelter, because the alcoholic needs their booze more. Alcoholism is a selfish, destructive and self centered disease, that rips families apart every day in this country.
If you are an alcoholic, and you read this, go get help. There are A.A. chapters in every city and country of this world. There are no excuses. If you can’t give up drinking, give up your children. Being a parent means being responsible. There are links to A.A. and even internet chapters online. Use them. You owe it to your children.
The heart of the suggested programme of personal recovery is contained in Twelve Steps of AA ,describing the experience of the earliest members of the Society:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs
Starting today, make a promise that you’ll try and turn your life around, giving your children back the parent they both need and deserve.
