I went to a group anniversary meeting tonight and one of the speakers on that panel was a 14 year old boy who shared. He told of how the fact that his father's drinking had affected him so much. It brought back so many of my own experiences of my dad's alcoholism. The crazy thing about this disease is that 3years after my dad died I picked up that drink and I myself ended up an alcoholic. I watched helplessly as my own children and wife suffered from the effects of my alcoholism. I was powerless to stop despite, how much I wanted to stop the suffering. That is why when help arrived in the form of AA, I held on to it and cherished it so much. I do not take my recovery program for granted, lest I let it slip away, fall and break and never to be regained. My family had suffered enough and I had suffered enough, to say the least. It was time to live the new life that was presented to me as a gift. Do I dare to squander it? That boy also shared after a short time of his family being in recovery, how joy has returned to their home. I will never forget those days when I had to leave my 2 year old son and go to meetings. But for us also joy returned to our home. A price had to be paid. The actual working of the12 steps and most of all repaying a debt to the man who first took time off to attend to a sick alcoholic like me. It's been 22 of the best years. But lest I forget where I came from. HUMILIATION IS THE ROAD TO HUMILITY.
Gonee, I've been thinking about my father (who was also an alcoholic) a lot lately, getting ready to write a long letter to him. He's been gone 8 years now. It's going to be an open letter and I'm going to share it on the ACOA board next door. Your post is confirmation that my idea will materialize.
I did not have any family members that had a drinking problem, some cousins that I saw at social gatherings seem to like to drink as much as I did, many years ago ....To date, none of them have ever gone to AA.
I just wanted to make a comment on your last words, never heard it put exactly this way..
Aloha Gonee...Great post and awareness...Alcoholism IS a family disease. I was born and raised in it...had the seed to my own alcoholism cultivated in it... married the addicted women I met thru it...went to Al-Anon and college to try to get a handle on it/me and get some why? questions answered...became a substance abuse and alcoholism counselor working with families, adolescents, individuals on all levels of recovery...got my AA membership as a result...work in public information and work with professionals because of it and have authored legislation attempting to create real "outside" change anonymously.
Alcoholism disolves everything it touches and in a family is like a fatal virus. It will take the family down and leave traces of itself in those who survive the earlier death.
I've never seen a family disease as powerful and destructive as the one we have.
I, too, like that. Which probably explains why I continue to humiliate myself, huh?
My Mom is an alcoholic, albeit she no longer drinks. Never been to a meeting, or even considered any kind of program, just quit when my Dad said he'd leave if she didn't. I was around 30 then, so the ramifications were already well ingrained in me. Two of my kids ended up as addicts, although they are clean now. The behaviours that effect our kids, that is one of those things that I continually have to release lest I be buried under the guilt for what I put them through, but it's the attitude of the addict or alcoholic, even after getting clean and sober, that is so important to change once the system itself gets healthy again. I sometimes see old behaviour in myself, and pull myself up by the shorthairs when I recognize it. I think what's scary is that when I see myself behaving that way, I'm aware of just how close it is to how I behaved under the influence. No matter how much time passes, if I don't stay on top of my daily inventory I can slip right into that dry drunk. And I know that a dry drunk is every bit as damaging to those around us....chris
Never thought of if...that way...but so very true, maybe not the gut wrenching humiliation that comes with that incomprehensible demorization that many of us know only too well before complete surrender to God, to the AA Program comes in....
Good to know we are still teachable, one of the great gifts of being Sober...
It is our blessed Program that teaches us that we only know what we know, (or think or feel we know in just today, never tomorrow....) Unfortunately I caught myself reading some Political news yesterday, a big no no usually, and I saw where a certain country was threatening some very bad things tomorrow..if we continued as a country to do some other things. Well, I did watch for a second, and my conclusion was DUH! well why not just talk about in tomorrow, the future is never known, but today is tomorrow, from yesterday, haha, and my solution is NOT to watch any news...
Ok, now you got me, a tinge of humiliation at that blabbing.......
I also like the saying, and the fact that you did separate the two: Humiliation and Humility. Once a person is there- humility- it no longer carries the self-centeredness and self-pity that accompanies humiliation. Just thought I'd add that, as I am soooo far from humility, yet trying to find it in my own recovery.
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~Your Higher Power has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.
