Here is one post where I will try to state what I have learned about adult children of alcoholics (of which I am one).
This is off the top of my head (swoosh!), because I have read a lot of books, gone to a lot of counseling and attended many different meetings of ACOAs and Al-Anon. Counselors can be good or bad. It’s sad but true. I once had a counselor advise me to leave my family for 2 weeks. Sometimes they are idiots. Honestly, I think the most productive, positive group I attended was Al-Anon meetings. They are mostly wives and husbands of an alcoholic, and they are not run by a professional counselor. Those people have figured out how not to be co-dependent. They are very independent-minded, and they understand personal responsibility, and where it stops. Here are some of the most valuable things I learned.
- Adult children of alcoholics are 40% MORE likely to either be alcoholics themselves, or marry someone who abuses substances. Now, why the heck would that happen?
(Why this would happen: We gravitate to what we know, especially if we are in denial. It feels familiar.)
- Children of alcoholics do not know what normal is. They struggle to figure this out the rest of their lives. How do you show love in a relationship? What do you share with others? What is okay to keep a secret? What is appropriate to say or not say? What is a healthy relationship, what is unhealthy?
- They grow up in families where they cannot talk about the elephant in the room. There is an elephant in the room that is hurting everybody. But the person responsible for the elephant refuses to deal with the elephant. The children may, at times, throw the elephant out, but it comes right back. They may draw attention to it, but the person responsible for it keeps saying, “Poor me, poor me,” and remains focused on him or herself and makes you feel guilty. So after awhile, you also deny its existence. (It must not be there.) You even take part in attacking others when they say it is sitting there stomping around the room. This is a learned pattern. Avoid, avoid, avoid. Deny, deny, deny. It is not really there! You are exaggerating! But I love you! It won’t happen again! It’s not that bad. How can you do this to me?? Occasionally you tell other relatives it is there, but they don’t believe you. So you start to think it is something wrong with you.
- You are very self-focused. Sometimes you, as well, get on the “pity-pot” as they say in AA.
- Some children of alcoholics go on “auto-pilot”. They show no emotion, very detached from others, don’t get social cues, and they like it this way. That way they don’t have to “feel” what is truly going on. This is how they get through life.
There are different roles that children of alcoholics take on, related to the patterns above. From the outside, for a long long time you can look like a “normal” family. You keep the secret well.
1. Oldest child – becomes the caretaker. Becomes the parent. Tries to take care of everybody, covers up for the alcoholic parent. Sometimes becomes a super-achiever, doing well in school, doing well at a job, exceling at everything they do. It is exhausting. You overcompensate. Everyone thinks you are a wonderful person, so successful. You don’t drink. You are dying inside.
2. Second child – More likely to drink and abuse alcohol themselves. The partier, they stay away from home and act out exactly what the parent is doing. In trouble at school, etc. Also in total denial. (They are not alcoholic, they are just having fun!)
3. a youngest child usually becomes the family clown. This child gives up on making sense while everyone is acting crazy & they just entertain everybody.
Imagine as a child having to clean up your parent’s vomit and put them to bed. Sometimes you start locking your bedroom door so the parent won’t come charging into your room drunk at night and make outrageous demands, like get up and sweep the floor, it’s dirty, yelling at you in a drunken rage. And nobody outside your home believes what is going on because by this time, you’ve given up. People don’t believe you anyway. You are a child.
Yes, it is totally damaging. Yes, children are affected – for life. Children don’t know why the parent can’t quit their habit for THEM. It’s not about loving the child enough to quit. It’s about being addicted, physically, emotionally, mentally, to a substance. It is a disease, or like a disease. It gets progressively worse and it eventually kills you.
When we took my mother in for treatment, the week my youngest child was born, I had given up. My sister came for the birth of my child, and asked, “How long has mom been this way?” Mom had gone on a 3-4 day drinking binge along with our oldest brother who was living with her at the time. She DROVE HER CAR over to my house, to see the baby. She talked and made no sense and left. I just had a baby. At that point, I had other responsibilities. My sister and youngest brother took it upon themselves to drive her into a treatment facility, and leave her there. It was probably the most difficult thing they’ve ever done. And it saved her life.
No one believes this either, but it is true, I’ve seen the medical records. My mom was .69 alcohol content when she arrived. She should have been comatose or dead. It took her a full week to get SOBER. It is disgusting in every aspect. But that is the state she had come to. When she arrived, she was TALKING, and ASKING for A DRINK of the nurses!! You can almost laugh about it. I stayed home and made the call that she was coming in. They asked me, “Has she been drinking?” I was so in denial I said, “I think so.”
I think so?? I THINK so?? Yeah, she was nearly dead.
My mom was a classy lady. She had risen in status with our father in his position as university professor of mechanical engineering. She still looked good. She hid bottles in her car, all over her house, and in her purse. She kept a full-time job. She was so good at hiding it, no one ever believed us when we told them. She nearly died and we all were severely affected by the patterns of interaction it set up in our household.
This was all many years ago. My mom, showing her own indeterminable strength and spirit of faith (I truly believe that) never drank again. She stopped cold turkey. Thank God for that. I forgive her for all she did to us. I really do. And I can think of her now with love. She loved all of us, I know that. But she was nasty to me. She would be mad at me no matter how much I did for her. Then she would turn around and accuse me of not coming to see her enough. I have forgiven her for that. Maybe she did the best she could. Who knows? I certainly don’t. She was funny, she loved Purdue basketball, she loved me, I know.
In any case, the question for me is, to what extent do I still show these kinds of patterns. I still don’t know what normal is. From a pattern of keeping secrets, I now find that I can’t keep any information secret. I’m an open book. If someone TELLS ME NOT to pass on something, then I can do that. But they have to tell me.
I don’t do all for everyone anymore. Go to Alanon, you will learn that trick. It’s very hard though. Sometimes I still want to. I want to give my kids and grandkids the world.
My situation was compounded by the loss of my father through early death just before the loss of my mother to alcoholism. From the shock of the 1st loss, I have an innate fear of EVER bringing bad news to my kids. I try to imagine the worst that could happen, and prepare for that. Because that’s what happened to me. And I was in no way prepared for it. So I always think of the worst-case scenario and try to prepare myself for that to happen. Just in case.
My oldest brother died of addictions. Cirrhosis of the liver is what he officially died of. He was on the street, homeless, alcoholic, and I know he did cocaine (I don’t know how much). Spending the last week of his life with him, which is what started this blog, was a very happy time for me. I am so glad we had that week. I hate to think what it would have been for him to be alone the last week of his life. I knew, by intuition, it was time to go. My sister was unable to get away from work to come. She had been in contact with Dan before he became sick enough with the cirrhosis that he could no longer function. Due to their contact, we heard that he was in the hospital.
That week, I could talk with him, bringing back some memories for him, of us as a family. I knew he would soon SEE and BE WITH our dad and mom. I frankly wanted to encourage him to remember them and those times, so he would GO to them when he saw them. My brother in a wheelchair begged me to take him out of the hospital and nursing home. He wanted a drink! Out of it, he even told me he missed that good, cocaine rush. My god. He begged me for an ice cream cone. They kept bringing him this crappy thick-type water, which he hated. That was because he was having trouble swallowing. So I got him a delicious ice cream out of a machine on the patio – TWICE – breaking the rules. I didn’t know for sure, but he only had a couple days of LIFE to GO, when I did this for him! I am so glad I broke the rules. He was so happy too, so appreciative. I was able to spend an afternoon of time saying prayers with him. I asked him if I could read some prayers, and he said, “Sure! Go ahead,” and hung his head. I read prayers while he fell asleep. This was the day I rolled his wheelchair outside onto the hospital patio because he was so cold. We sat in the sun. It was a good time.
I am sad for the state of my family and what all pain it caused. But I am really at peace now, at least within myself. I am happy with things I did for them, in the name of God alone. I have no regrets there. Regrets in other parts of my life and regrets for my extreme immaturity and how long it took me to learn these lessons, yes. But not in my caring for them. It was not for their sake, but in the name of God, as a service. And I did it to the end.
I can only hope that no more damage comes to my husband, my children or their children in the form of patterns of interaction from the past. My husband’s family is stable and has taught me much. My husband has taught me much. The only way to avoid damage in the future is to face the truth square on, and consult with one another. I pray God that will continue to happen.
Doctor Grandma 