How Al-Anon Works by Al-Anon Family Groups

Author:Al-Anon Family Groups [Groups, Al-Anon Family]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Al-Anon Family Groups
Published: 2014-06-30T07:00:00+00:00

10

An Adult Child Uncovers Hidden Secrets

Al-Anon was my last hope. When I first walked through its doors I was terribly lonely, frightened, and confused. I brought with me 21 years of living with the family disease of alcoholism. During the first 19 of those years, I had no idea what I was dealing with. “Your mother is just a nervous person,” my father had told me. “Your father has an awful temper,” my mother would say. Everyone seemed to argue all the time. Whatever was wrong with our family, I was sure it must be my fault. And although I felt totally helpless, I was also certain that it was my responsibility to take care of my family.

When I was 19, my younger sister bluntly broke the news to me: “I think Mom has a drinking problem.” It made perfect sense, because drinking had always been evident, but I didn’t really want to hear those words. I had spent my life with blinders on, and I wasn’t enthusiastic about removing them. But at last I understood why nothing I had done to help my family had ever worked—I hadn’t been going after the real problem.

Armed with my new knowledge, I vowed to conquer this drinking business quickly! I approached the problem with great zeal, counting bottles, marking bottles, emptying bottles, hiding bottles, and rationing bottles. I begged, scolded, nagged, and pleaded. I redoubled my other efforts—I cleaned my room, washed the dishes, got home on time, and avoided or corrected all the things my mother had pointed to as the cause of the problem.

Yet I lay nauseated in bed each night, listening to the scrape of the bottle across her bedroom closet shelf. I heard the bottle cap unscrew, the liquor fill the glass, and the gurgle of fluid passing down my mother’s throat. I was alone in my own room with a wall, a closed door, and 20 feet of space between us, but I might as well have been two inches from her face.

I never questioned whether or not it was my responsibility to take care of her. As far as I was concerned, that was a given. I was the only one in the family still living with my mother. Who else was there? I lived in a state of anxiety from which I saw no way out.

During those two desperate years, I heard of Al-Anon on television, and the seed was planted. Nonetheless, I didn’t really believe that anyone could help. The TV show said that a loved one couldn’t stop an alcoholic from drinking, but it went on to recommend that the family come to Al-Anon meetings. I thought that was the stupidest thing I had ever heard. “If it won’t stop the drinking, why go?” I asked myself. So I didn’t go. Instead, I wore my martyr face and silently suffered. I was unable to see how tense, depressed, and out of control my life was. All I could see was that my mother needed fixing.

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