Al-Anon Family Group

The Forum magazine articles - July 2008

The following articles from the July 2008 issue are reprinted with permission of The Forum, Al-Anon Family Group Hdqs., Inc., Virginia Beach, VA.  For more articles, check The Forum archive.

My mom was the wife of an Air Force officer and a closet alcoholic. She always kept up appearances and expected no less from me. The message I learned was, "Trust no one because you'll be judged by what you look like, what you do, and what you say." In other words, "Hide the truth and pretend you're perfect at all times, regardless of how you feel." "What if" dominated my thinking every time I left the house, especially when I began to date as a young teen. It would begin the day of the first date when I would pace the house debating which outfit would show that I was interested in attracting a young man's attention. I was consumed by fear that young men might find out about my mom's alcoholism, even though she quit drinking when I was eight years old and she became pregnant with my sister. "-Isms" were prominent in our house, even though I didn't know it back then. I knew it wasn't a "normal" family situation, so I rarely brought any of my dates home. In Al-Anon, I am faced with moments where "what if" tries to slip me up in my day-to-day living. Now, I take a much healthier approach and have an attitude of surrender. I am able to look at some occurrences as God's will, not mine, and I face my fears and worries about intimate relationships with less anxiety. I am able to say, "If this turns out not to go the way I would like it, there's a reason." I may not know what it is or why, but I have an easier time accepting it by using the Serenity Prayer, attending Al-Anon meetings, and talking with other members.

Until I was seven, I thought I had a wonderful life. I lived with my mother, my aunt, and my grandfather. I had a lot of friends and I got good grades. I had no worries in the world, until my mother saw him again. He was my worst nightmare—he was my stepdad. He had a drinking problem, the disease called alcoholism. It took over his life and later took it away. My mother loved him, so I tried to make her happy by pretending that I loved him, too. They got married not long after my seventh birthday, and my new sister was coming. I also had a new stepbrother. I had to move to a new house that I hated. I don't know why I hated it; I just did. My other brother was born not long after the move. A few years later, my stepdad shot himself while drunk. He started yelling for me to bring him the phone, so I did. He called his own ambulance. The ambulance had to take him away, and he went to the hospital for a while. Not too long after that, his stomach was bleeding. It caused a lot of chaos for everybody. He had been in a lot of pain, and so had we. He was back in the hospital for a long time, and everyone was worried. After a while, he came home, but we knew it would happen again. As I grew up, I felt sorry for my stepdad. When he was gone, I missed him. I grew to love him more and more, but that was confusing. I didn't know it was okay to love a stepparent. My mom and my counselor suggested I attend Alateen. The meetings helped me a lot. I learned that I wasn't the only one who had been affected by alcoholism. I liked the feeling of being understood, so I kept going back. Mom kicked my stepdad out a few times because he kept coming home drunk and hiding his bottles of vodka where he thought we couldn't find them. Drink after drink, she let him back in. He left for nine months, and everybody missed him, but we knew it was for the best. We all really loved him, but we just couldn't take it anymore. I still loved him, even though I didn't want to admit it. I was in a lot of denial at that point, too. About a year later, the internal bleeding started again. He went to the hospital and then came back a few days later. He seemed fine, as far as I could tell. When I came home from school one day, the bus pulled up to my house with about 20 police cars in front of it. I got about halfway down my hill before my grandfather stopped me. He said that my stepdad had passed away. I didn't understand. He seemed fine almost a week ago. But he had overdosed on alcohol and medication again, and this time it was enough to kill. I know from Alateen, that my stepdad had a disease. I feel so bad that before he died I never really showed him how much I loved him, how much I cared. I've learned to appreciate my pets because you never know what's in store. I appreciate my mom because she cares. I appreciate my Alateen friends. They can help me through anything. Most of all, I have to learn to appreciate myself.

I grew up in California on a cattle and citrus ranch. I had everything a boy could want. I went to a prestigious prep school and then to an ivy-league college, where I enrolled in ROTC. I was commissioned as an officer in the United States Air Force. I became a fighter pilot, served two tours in Vietnam, spent six years in the Pentagon, and retired in Canada after serving for five years as the Defense Attache at the United States Embassy in Ottawa. It was during a posting in Brussels, Belgium that I was forced to consider that perhaps my wife had a drinking problem. Although no mention had been made of alcoholism, over-drinking was beginning to affect our marriage, our friends, and my job. I had to do something. I was desperate to find a way to help my wife. At my first Al-Anon meeting, I found 20 or so talkative people, apparently enjoying themselves. They were all women. My "problem" was a woman, and this group turned me off completely. And imagine my shock and disappointment when I heard that there would be no talk about the alcoholic. I deeply resented having to go to Al-Anon because of her drinking. She had the problems, not me. It would not be until three years later that I would stay for the recommended six meetings. I sought out Al-Anon in Ottawa. Of course, I was introduced to Step One. The first part didn't seem to pose a problem; I didn't feel the need to defend against an admission about alcohol. But, that my life had become unmanageable? I was a senior officer in the United States Air Force who had gotten to where I was precisely because I could manage. How was I to accept that I had allowed my life to become unmanageable? My feet became firmly planted and my hearing turned off. And there I stayed until my defenses softened. I began to learn to see and hear what everyone in my group had or was experiencing. They were just like me. At a family program at a local hospital, I picked up a pamphlet called Did You Grow Up with a Problem Drinker? (S-25). It had 20 questions and told me that if I answered one or more of the questions with a "yes," I could be an adult child of an alcoholic. The only "no" was for the last question: Was either of your parents a problem drinker? My parents were heavy social drinkers, but neither was alcoholic. I was at a loss as to how to resolve the description of me as an adult child. A month or so later, I found myself in California. I ran across a very good friend of my father's. I asked him if he had known my grandfather. His answer was, "Oh, yes; he was a great guy." I asked if he could confirm that my granddad had died of wounds that he had suffered in World War I. "What?!" he answered, surprised. "Where did you get that story? You're granddad died of alcohol poisoning." I had my answer. My dad had grown up to be an adult child of an alcoholic. He passed it on to me, and I had been a very good student. I later discovered that my mother had had a grandparent who was an alcoholic as well. I had been raised by two adult children; no wonder I had answered "yes" to those 19 questions. Becoming aware of the predictable characteristics of an adult child of an alcoholic helped explain to me how I had grown to become who I was. I could see that a good report card, a winning score, or the appreciation for work well done were the most significant requirements in my life. I needed to be "perfect" to assure approval. I also needed to be totally self-sufficient, never asking for help from anyone. One of the techniques I discovered to accomplish these needs was to shut down my emotions. If I didn't feel, I could just get on with being perfect. One day I was reciting the Serenity Prayer to myself slowly, trying to appreciate each word and phrase as I said it. "Accept the things I cannot change." Acceptance, but of what? Just the things I could not change? Or was there something else? Where was the wisdom I needed to know the difference between my need for acceptance and my need for courage? I needed acceptance of her, of me, and of where "I" stopped. Just then I looked at my hand and saw my index finger. There was "my" limit—the end of my finger. At that moment, my index finger became my "wisdom finger," the reference that I could use to see where the power of my will stopped. The only world that I need to change and work with stops at the end of this finger. Now I could begin to work on the fact that my life had become unmanageable. How could I do that when I had worked professionally for 30 years to assure that my life was always well-managed? But was it? My professional life, yes; but my personal life, most certainly not. There, I accepted it. If I could live that acceptance, then I could claim Step One. My two largest fears were fear of rejection and fear of abandonment. I was so concerned about how someone else would feel and whether they would still like me that I waited for them to show me how I felt. That way I would be safe—people would not reject or abandon me. I realized after time that the deep basis for this sequence of habit and behavior included a very low self-esteem. I was fully convinced that I didn't matter. I was not able to pinpoint where all this was coming from, but my Higher Power soon gave me a lesson and allowed me to see inside. What I saw deep down was a vulgar, bad, terrible something that I began to call "Little Rotten." "Little Rotten" was what made me different. It was the explanation for why I would never allow myself to belong; it was what made me much "less than;" and was, in fact, the basis for who and how I was. He was the deepest secret in my life. It became more and more evident that I was going to have to change my relationship with "Little Rotten" if I was going to be able to make any progress towards recovery. My relationship with my Higher Power had continued to grow during this time though, and that seemed a logical place to turn. I did so very carefully because I wasn't sure my Higher Power would tolerate "Little Rotten." This brought me the first of many lessons about just how my Higher Power and I were going to relate. I awoke to the knowledge that my Higher Power accepted me warts and all—and that included "Little Rotten." My logic and awareness took a leap—if my Higher Power could accept me, who was I not to accept me? Whoa—I don't accept me? My Sponsor asked if I had an understanding of surrender. I said, "Certainly, it's what I learned never  to do during 30 years as a fighter pilot." "Not the same," said my Sponsor. "Humility is the state of having established the true relationship between you and your Higher Power." To do that I would need to surrender my will and my life to my Higher Power. "I can do that willingly," I said. After a few months of talk, thought, and work, I was finally ready to humbly ask. I realized that I had come to a place where I was comfortable to make such a request as removing my shortcomings, but I had no idea how or when it might happen. Then I recalled another piece of good Sponsor advice that I had almost never taken—meditation. He suggested to always keeping in mind that praying was talking to God, but meditation was listening for answers. "Of course," he said, "you not only have to be willing to listen in meditation, you have to be willing to hear."