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Alcohol's silent victims speak out
ALCOHOLISM tears apart minds, bodies, lives and especially families. And it is these family members, friends and loved ones who put up with the drinking, lying, scheming and often, abuse and violence, in a bid to stop their loved one from drinking or to keep it under wraps. Many think there is nothing else they can do, nowhere they can turn and, despite having been around for more than 50 years, the term Al-Anon is an unfamiliar one.
Al-Anon is a support organisation for the family and friends of alcoholics which has been running globally for more than 50 years and was founded by Lois Wilson - the wife of AA founder Bell Wilson.
While you probably wouldn’t know it, there are hundreds of meetings around Ireland every week. Locally, there are three weekly meetings in Kilkenny and four in Carlow.
Similarly to AA, Al-Anon members follow a 12 step programme at their own pace and are encouraged to have a sponsor from inside the group and keep in phone contact with other members for support between meetings. Each meeting usually focuses on one of the Al-Anon steps, traditions or slogans and members share how they have put it into action in their own lives.
Al-Anon is not a religious programme. It is described as ‘spiritual but non-denominational’ and many of the steps and slogans refer to ‘God as you understand him’ which could be either a religious God, a higher being or simply the understanding that there are some things we can’t control.
Eileen* is a long-term member of Al-Anon who grew up in a family affected by alcoholism and then found herself married to an alcoholic.
She was, in her own words, her husband’s biggest ‘enabler’. Fearing he would get in the car drunk and injure himself or someone else, she would buy alcohol for him to drink in the house and it took her a long time to realise she was part of the problem and should take some of the blame. She was married for nearly 35 years before either herself or her husband sought help and by then, they were both close to rock bottom.
“I was lucky in that my husband never hit me and he never left us short of money,” Eileen said. “But it was all about manipulation. Everything I said or did would be twisted around or thrown back at me and my self esteem was totally shattered to the point where I wouldn’t buy a stitch of clothing for myself without his approval.”
When her husband entered a treatment programme, Eileen began going to Al-Anon where her view on things took a dramatic turn.
“I realised I was at much at fault for what had happened in our family as he was, but I didn’t have the tools to change my behaviour,” she said. “Al-Anon gives you those tools for life and makes you realise that you can’t change anyone but yourself.”
She has been attending Al-Anon meetings for more than 20 years and is an ardent supporter and believer in the programme. Her husband no longer drinks and hasn’t for 20 years, but Eileen continues to attend meetings and apply the Al-Anon principles to her way of life.
“I choose to stay with it because I was very damaged,” Eileen said. “I have a big family and I can’t afford to go back to the way I was.”
Like Eileen and so many other people affected by the alcoholism of a family member or friend, Adrian* had never heard of Al-Anon and only discovered it existed when the alcoholic in his life started attending a treatment programme. Like so many before him, he expected the programme would give him a miracle cure and was shocked to discover it wouldn’t, but, according to Adrian, he slowly came to realise that it could help him change his life.
“Like most people who go to Al-Anon for the first time, I thought I would be told what to do to cure the family member,” he said. “I had a lot of guilt about the problem and blamed myself.”
At his first meeting, Adrian learnt about the three C’s: “I didn’t cause it; I can’t control it; I can’t cure it.” But he had trouble with one of the fundamental aspects of Al-Anon - to detach with love.
“It took me a long time to get my head around this, as it is very hard to observe someone you love causing so much damage to themself and be unable to do anything about it,” he said.
To illustrate the meaning and point of the step, Eileen explains two different repsonses to a common situation.
“If the alcoholic comes stumbling in the door and falls, passing out on the kitchen floor, you put a pillow under their head, cover them with a blanket and go to bed yourself,” she said. “That way they’ll wake up to find themselves in the situation they got themselves into. You don’t pick them up and put them to bed, because then they’ll wake up and won’t even realise what they’ve done.”
Adrian stuck with the programme for the sake of his family - and his sanity - and has turned his life around.
“This is a family disease and all members of my family are affected by it differently,” he said. “Before I started attending Al-Anon meetings, the person addicted to alcohol would have controlled me and the household. Out lives were on hold and manipulated by that person.
“Today, the addict in my life is good, but I still attend meetings,” he said. “They help to keep me focused on what I can do to help myself and others, I try to be an active member as service is an important part of Al-Anon. I am glad it was there for me in my hour of need and I am glad to share my experience to support others on their journey.”
What to expect
“There are a lot of tears in the early days because most people come in thinking they’re going to be given a solution to their problem,” Eileen explained. “But what they get are the tools and confidence to help them change their own lives and sometimes it takes a while to grasp that.”
Members are encouraged to attend at least six meetings before they decide whether Al-Anon is for them or not and Eileen said it’s very common for people to leave after a while and return a short time later. “There’s a harmony and serenity in the room that a very distressed person coming in can feel,” she said. “Newcomers are very well looked after and start to realise they’re not as isolated as they might have thought they were. When you’re in that situation, you think no one else is feeling the way you do.”
Similar to the AA, anonymity is a huge part of the programme and members are assured of their identities being kept secret.
“We only use first names in the group,” Eileen explained. “I wouldn’t have a clue about the lives of the other members, or where they’re from or what they do. We’re all the same, we’re all equal when we walk inside the door of an Al-Anon meeting and if someone you know is there, they’re there for the same reasons you are.”
This solidarity and understanding from people in a similar situation was what helped Betty* when she first started going to meetings. She went along to get help with her husband’s drinking problem, but that was after many years of trying to solve the problem herself.
“I went along to Al-Anon because my husband started drinking too much after our wedding,” Betty said. But after a moment’s hesitation, she corrects herself. “Actually, he was already drinking too much before the wedding, but stupidly, I though that once we got married he’d be so happy with me he’d stop drinking.
“But over the years, the drinking got worse. He’d stay out all night and not come home.” At this point, the couple had two young children and Betty was desperate to stop her husband’s drinking.
“The more addicted he got, the more obsessed I became with trying to get him to stop,” she said. “Those desperate times called for desperate measures.”
Betty tried to “manipulate” situations to keep her husband away from drink.
“I’d plan events with the children or tell him I was cooking a really nice meal - anything to encourage him to come home from the pub,” she said. “And when that didn’t work, I’d go out to the pubs, looking in them all until I found him and tried to get him to come home.”
And when that failed, Betty took it one step further. “I even tried locking him in the bedroom, but obviously that didn’t work,” she laughed, wryly. “It got to the point where my head was so messed up from it all and there was constant game-playing going on. I’d get out of bed early in the morning to try and confront him when he was sober, but he’d get up even earlier and leave before I could catch him.”
Then with three small children, Betty was close to the end of her tether when she found out about AA. “I got some literature and left it out for him, but of course he wouldn’t go,” she said. “But then AA told me about Al-Anon so I decided to give that a go myself.”
Betty went along to her first meeting making the most common mistake newcomers to Al-Anon make - that someone will give them a foolproof plan to stop their loved one from drinking.
“I just wanted them to get some answers and for them to tell me how to get him to stop drinking,” she said. “I had three kids and I thought I was doing everything right. I didn’t see I had a problem myself. I was just like the alcoholic who was in denial.”
Betty said when she realised it wasn’t going to be that easy, she nearly gave up on Al-Anon, but then began to realise that she could identify with the other people there, who were all going through the same things she was.
“When I realised there was no quick fix, I decided it wasn’t for me, but after a while I began to relate to the people there and the stories they were telling and I realised I had to change my own behaviour,” she said. “I stopped waiting up for his key in the door, I stopped keeping the children up with me for company and I stopped waiting around for the alcoholic to come home before we could go out.”
n Al-Anon Information Centre 5 Capel Street, Dublin 1
01-8732699
info@al-anon-ireland.org log www.al-anon-ireland.org
* Names have been changed to protect the anonymity of the sources
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Wednesday 08 February 2012
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