Seeking Serenity…

Understanding Ourselves…

Families and Friends Are Affected

“Alcoholism is a family disease. Compulsive drinking affects the drinker and it affects the drinkers relationships. Friendships, employment, childhood, parenthood, love affairs, and marriages all suffer from the effects of alcoholism. Those special relationships in which a person is really close to an alcoholic are affected most and we who care are the most caught up in the behavior of another person. We react to an alcoholics behavior. Seeing that the drinking is out of hand, we try to control it. We are ashamed of the public scenes but try to handle it in private. It isn’t long before we feel we are to blame and take on the hurts, the fears, and the guilt of an alcoholic. We, too, can become ill.

Even well-meaning people often begin to count the number of drinks another person is having. We may pour expensive liquor down drains, search the house for hidden bottles or listen for the sound of opening cans. All our thinking becomes directed at what the alcoholic is doing or not doing and how to get the drinker to stop drinking. This is our obsession.

Watching fellow human beings slowly kill themselves with alcohol is painful. While alcoholics don’t seem to worry about the bills, the job, the children or the condition of their health, the people around them usually begin to worry. We often make the mistake of covering up. We try to fix everything, make excuses, tell little lies to mend damaged relationships, and worry some more. This is our anxiety.

Sooner or later the alcoholics behavior makes other people angry. As we realize that the alcoholic is telling lies, using us, and not taking care of responsibilities, we may begin to feel that the alcoholic doesn’t love us. We often want to strike back, punish, and make the alcoholic pay for the hurt and frustration caused by uncontrolled drinking. This is our anger.

Sometimes those who are close to the alcoholic begin to pretend. We accept promises and trust the alcoholic. Each time there is a sober period, however brief, we want to believe the problem has gone away forever. When good sense tells us there is something wrong with the alcoholics drinking and thinking, we still hide how we feel and what we know. This is our denial.

Perhaps the most severe damage to those of us who have shared some part of life with an alcoholic comes in the form of the nagging belief that we are somehow at fault. We may feel it was something we did or did not do - that we were not good enough, not attractive enough or not clever enough to have solved this problem for the one we love. These are our feelings of guilt.”

-How Al-Anon Works for Families and Friends of Alcoholics

“We find the encouragement, help, and support we’ve been seeking in Al-Anon. What a miraculous feeling to discover that many, many others do understand what we are going through.”

— How Al-Anon Works for Families & Friends of Alcoholics