(Note: I was looking through some old essays and found this one I wrote for a wellness website exactly 10 years ago. With a couple of updates, it still rings true to my decades-long commitment to breaking cycles of addiction and abuse.)
It’s as omnipresent as bad Christmas music: that vague sense of dread for people who are related to an active addict at holiday time.
“I don’t know when he’ll do it, but I know it’s a matter of time before he’ll drink too much and make an ass out of himself.”
“I used to love Christmas. Then I married into a family with an alcoholic who manages to suck the joy out of every gathering; everyone is so worried that she’ll fall, or pass out, or cuss somebody out. Even if she behaves, everyone else is so busy trying to control everything that there’s bound to be a blowup. It happens every year!”
“It’s hell living with a food addict. They obsess over not binging, then they binge, and then they get mad as hell at anyone and everyone as if we MADE them eat.”
A solution to this family tradition of carried pain and shame isn’t what most folks want to hear. We want a quick fix and the ability to continue blaming and shaming “the person with the problem.”
But judging someone else, and the resulting blame or shame, fear or control, isn’t helping anyone. Especially not the co-addict, or codependent — the “para-addict” — who begins to act like the alcoholic, drug addict, food addict, or whomever, without even using the substance.
Addiction is, after all, a family disease, meaning everyone is touched by it.
I’ve heard it said that codependence kills more people than alcoholism ever thought about killing. And I believe it. The stress of living with someone active in an addiction — be it alcohol, drugs, food, sex, spending, work, gossip, whatever — is overwhelming, unless we seek help. Even with help it is a challenge.
I have found relief from the effects of growing up with this pain through a support group for families and friends of alcoholics.
For the last 28 years this group — with meetings online, down the street, on the phone, and all over the world — has meant respite and a reset. I am grateful for this gathering of friends and strangers who share a common concern and learn a common solution: to keep the focus on themselves.
By learning more about caring for ourselves; repeatedly hearing that we didn’t cause the problem, we cannot control it, and we cannot cure it; by learning to be gentle with ourselves and others, we slowly but surely begin to find some joy.
The support group speaks of our “turning our will and our lives over to a power greater than ourselves.” For me, the Higher Power is a quartet of love, nature, gratitude, and peace. And I have leaned so heavily into them over the years that despite multiple challenges I can maintain, most of the time, “the peace that passes all understanding.”
People who’re addicted, and the people who live with and love them, often change behaviors in an instant. They can be happy one minute, and then irritable and lashing out the next. They can cast a pall over what should be a time of celebration and love.
They can trash your holiday — or motivate you to make a change within yourself.
Hurting people hurt people. Hurt people hurt people.
To keep from joining an addict in hurting the ones you love, take time out to nurture yourself. Give Al-Anon or Alateen a try for six meetings. See if the acceptance, hope, and peace doesn’t bring you a sense of relief.
It can’t hurt. And it may just help stop the hurting.
For more information, and to find a meeting near you, visit www.al-anon.alateen.org
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