It recently occurred to me I wear many hats when it comes to addiction. I’m the daughter of an alcoholic. I learned early to walk on egg shells and feel overly responsible for you. Your bad mood, was somehow my fault. I was eager to please with no well defined boundaries.
In my early teens I switched roles going from the care-taker to the scape goat. If I wasn’t going to get positive attention I was willing to settle for negative… and I got plenty of it. This is when I took my first drink, found my first love, and thought it a good idea to be a child, raising a child.
So now, not only am I the daughter of an alcoholic, I’m well on my way to being one. Wishful thinking became a way of life, living in and creating chaos, manipulating others and to top it all off, being a teen parent who knew absolutely nothing about parenting.
By this time, not only am I the daughter of an alcoholic, and well on the way to being one, I’m a poor excuse of a mother. One who doesn’t feel very good about herself and medicates with anything she can get her hands on.
You’d think it was drinking and drugging which were my problems, but they weren’t. They were my solution and that in itself was the real problem.
Years pass, as they do and it became apparent I wasn’t just the daughter of an alcoholic, and by this time one myself, but I was the mother of one also. My child very early on, developed a relationship with marijuana and shortly after, hard drugs.
I reacted to all of this very poorly. I developed great survival skills. You know, the fight or flight response. Weird, when I think back. I really thought I could change him, when the truth was, I couldn’t even change me.
Life was interesting, to say the very least. Each moment rich with tension, blame, resentment, or anger. We chose sides and drew lines in the sand. There were times it wore us all out and we’d give in or get out, or take another drink, or find some other way to avoid the reality of what was happening.
When you develop the ability to avoid reality, you also develop the ability to deny, minimize, rationalize, justify, deflect, make excuses for and become tolerant of, intolerable behavior. Yours and others.
Now we have a real problem. For not only am I the daughter of an alcoholic, the mother of an alcoholic and one myself. I’m now co-dependent too.
Dear Lord! Can it get any worse?
The short answer? Yes!
It’s really easy, when you’re involved in addiction, to want everyone else to change. If they all just got their act together, your life could be so much better. Happy even.
Huh, uh.
See it doesn’t work that way. Whether you’re the daughter of an alcoholic, or the parent of one, or one yourself, it’s you who has to change. Not anybody else. You can’t make people change. All you get for trying, is sicker than before.
Yes I said it. Sicker than before. For that’s what we become when we’re involved in addiction. We learn to adjust, and then re-adjust and finally mal-adjust.
Some of us spend a lifetime waiting for someone else to change.
I worked with a woman once, who refused to do anything she would get pleasure from while her son struggled with addiction. She told me as long as he was unwell, she couldn’t feel good either. She gave up the simple things. Her smile, and laughter. Faith, gratitude and hope. Her finances were long gone, her husband too. Her daughter wasn’t on speaking terms with her. She rarely left the house in case he called needing her.
That’s just one case, but their are millions and I get it.
None us knows how sick we become, when consumed with addiction. Sometimes I really believe the addict, or alcoholic, is the least impaired of the bunch.
Nothing with addiction is as it seems. When one person changes, it changes the dynamics and outcome. This is how we move forward. Not by waiting for others to change. But by doing it ourselves.
Nothing says things are changing in this family more, than when I stop talking and start doing.
If you love someone effected by this disease, get an education, get support, learn what role you play. Instead of asking them to go to meetings, get up and go yourself. If you’re unwilling, then you are part of the problem. Don’t ask others to do, what you won’t do.
And If it’s you who has the disease of addiction, good luck. You can’t stay sick without an enabling system.
And who knows? Someone reading this just might do it different. Just one thing. Pick up the phone, reach out, say it out loud.
You can’t change, what you won’t acknowledge.
You can start now. Practice. Go to the mirror. Say it.
Own your part. Step into the solution.
Recovery’s a game the whole family can play too. But somebody has to start.
Will you?
katrina
I agree im a recovering alcholoic whose father is one also. I was used to the game at an early age. Now I understand why my sister put up the boundries she has over the years.
anon mother in Canada
hank you, your post comes at a time in my life where I am having to set boundaries and I am now starting a child custody concern with her father who has an addiction. Your post gave me the strength to stay strong today with my boundaries and to keep moving forward in building a helathy life for me and the children.
Lorelie
So glad this post as able to relay a most timely message. Doing the right thing, when it comes to addiction is never a quik fix, it’s a process. Hang in there and keep doing the next right thing. Eventually you’ll reap the rewards and one day you will wake up wanting to pinch yourself because you’ll be truly amazed this incredibly amazing life… Is yours!
rachel875
Great blog! I can relate to your post as though I wrote it. 🙂
I had to call a heavy boundary on a very close family member who drinks, we haven’t spoken much for two years now, it makes me SO sad every day, I miss her.
I had to do it though, and must continue to maintain my boundary or get sucked back into the mayhem which I will not do to myself.
Lorelie
Thanks Rachel, we sure don’t get here alone! Thing is, when you know better and do it anyhow, you can’t blame anyone but yourself. What’s even harder, because it takes one to know one, is knowing sick family members don’t have the ability to look at their own behaviors. So as we set boundaries and move foreword with our lives, they use it as fuel to drink more and blame us. It’s a crazy making merry-go-round. In the end our happiness really isn’t another persons responsibility. It’s ours. Sure takes the fun out of pointing fingers! And you’re right, when you set boundaries, what you’re left with, are the feelings. We ask other’s to treat us with respect, but they won’t if you don’t. That’s what boundaries are all about. A statement ‘I value myself.’ Way to go!
Author Catherine Townsend-Lyon
Reblogged this on *Recovery Blog~Author Catherine Lyon* and commented:
DO YOU know a FAMILY who is touched by Addiction?? This is a very Powerful Post that should be *SHARED*…..Author, Catherine Lyon
Author Catherine Townsend-Lyon
WOW!! WHO got you all fired UP GIRL!!….lol…Great Post! SO good I am going to reblogg on MY BLOG!! Hugs & Blessings, Cat
Lorelie
You’re awesome! A nice deed for a nice dee. Thanks and check out my fb page. https://www.facebook.com/AddictedToDimesAuthorCatherineLyon
annarosemeeds
Wow, powerful post. I know that my eating disorder has effected me whole family but I am working to change it. Thanks for the reminder!