(And as my own New Year’s resolution I’ve decided to henceforth refer to supporters of alcoholics as SOA’s, to make writing this blog a little simpler.) SOA’s are very organized, planning people – to the point where we can easily (and often fairly) be accused of micro-managing. This is largely because so much of life around us in beyond our control. This desperate need t control life around us has become our own ism. As we move through our own recovery, we learn to manage this ism through the power of letting go, letting God. This concept encourages us to spend more time trusting that things will work out to the highest good. But this doesn’t mean that we relinquish all planning and organizing. As a friend of mine says (and as I’ve referenced in this blog several times), trust in the Universe and tie up your camel. In other words, it’s important for us to think about our lives and take prudent actions. Don’t sit around watching TV all day and expect the Universe to look after your rent. At the same time, if you’ve done your planning well, then you can relax a little and left life take its course. For example, if we have done everything we could to raise our children well, at some point we need to sit back and let them live their lives. We can trust that one way or the other, they will survive and hopefully, lead happy and productive lives.

I use this same approach around this time of year when I review my plan and accomplishments to date, and determine where I want to expend my time, energy and money on the coming year. I learned the important of this task after reading Stephen Covey. He is an inspirational speaker and writer who focuses on helping people to think about what is important to them, and then ensure that those are the things that they focus on in their lives. I agree with Covey: if we don’t take the time to think about what we find important and then plan to build our lives around those focuses, we tend to spend far too much time on the stuff that quite frankly isn’t as important to us.

My plan usually has five elements to it: me, my kids, my partner, my work, my house/finances. While it’s not always easy to put myself first, I try to do so at least in terms of my plan. The section of me discusses health and fitness, happiness (time with friends and family, hobbies, cultural events, and personal goals). The section on my kids describes the concepts of behaviours I would like to help them with that year, and perhaps some specific goals (such as ensuring my son takes his driver’s test). The section on my partner ensures that I think about our relationship as an important area of my life, requiring nurturing and thus, time and energy. It may include specific ideas (go on a fishing trip together this summer) or less tangible objectives (focus more on living in the moment when we are together). The section on my job outlines either specific tasks or behaviour modifications I would like to achieve. It also might reference my expectations in terms of work environment or compensation. The section on finances states where I am on certain front (mortgage, debt, etc.) and identifies my goals for each area. It also outlines how I plan to get there, and reminds me of concepts I want to engage to help me (i.e. take my lunch every day instead of buying it).

The two most important actions regarding a plan are: 1. Write one; and 2. Read it every month so you can try to follow it. A great plan tucked away for the next twelve months is useless. If you’re anything like me, your life is far too busy to remember everything you want to accomplish in a given year. And things happen far too quickly for you to recall the behaviour and attitude changes you want to undergo. By reading your plan every month, you can gently remind yourself of all of those ideals so that as you live your life from month to month, you’ll start to realize when you are in a moment where you could actually try to accomplish something from your plan.

And finally, let go a bit and don’t try to push too hard. If you are meant to change something about your life and you’ve written about it, essentially asking the Universe for the opportunity to change, that chance will come when the time is right. Do those daily exercises if you want to lose the weight. But don’t weigh yourself five times a day. Try once a week instead. Do all those money-saving initiatives you came up with but don’t reconcile your bank statement every two days. Do a proper accounting once a month to see if and where you are making a difference. Try to be nicer at work but don’t spend half a day mentally beating yourself up if you lose patience with someone. Take a few minutes to give yourself some compassion for recognizing that you lost your patience, apologize to the person if appropriate, and tell yourself that you’ll do better next time. Then trust that another opportunity will arise to do just that.

This is a very loving Universe. We are all worthy of that love. Do the work, show you are ready (and deserving) of some of that love, and then trust, relax, and watch it come to you. And that is my wish for you in the New Year: that through you own actions of thinking, planning and then trusting, the Universe shows you tremendous love in 2012.

I met new people and old acquaintances. I was able to catch up with one of the latter at the tail end of the evening and asked how his home life was going. He’s married to an alcoholic and despite her severe ups and downs with the disease, he’s stuck by her like the true gentleman he was raised to be. But gentlemen aren’t necessarily happy.

He told me that there had been another crash and burn recently, although his wife insists she isn’t drinking. He suggested that what she might be going through is a dry drunk – which he understands to be a condition post drinking where alcoholics can develop the same physical symptoms of drunkenness, despite being dry.

I’m not sure where he’s getting his information from, but that’s not my understanding of a dry drunk. In my world, a dry drunk is someone who is not drinking, but still carries many of the isms of a dunk. While this may or may not have physical manifestations (I’d leave it with addictions doctors to determine that), it definitely includes certain behaviours common to active alcoholics.

For example, a dry drunk may continue to feel paranoia. They may be highly judgemental, impatient and short-tempered, ego-centric, self-centred, irrational in their logic and decision-making processes, or unable to make decisions, and they may continue to require immediate gratification.

It has been my experience, personally and through years of attending support groups and hearing from others, that this condition is particularly prevalent in the first year of recovery for an alcoholic and can persists beyond that – perhaps for years. Alternatively, alcoholics in recovery can revert to the dry drunk condition periodically throughout their lives. It can be brought on by triggers, such as stress, or simply be a manifestation of the reality that recovering alcoholics can have their good days and their bad days. No garden path is perfectly straight and no life’s journey is without its challenges.

That said, the toll on the supporter of the alcoholic can be enormous. I’ve frequently heard that living with someone in their first year of sobriety is far worse that living with their active alcoholism. Someone in the middle of alcoholic chaos would find that hard to believe, but it can be true that with alcoholism often come some silliness, gushy love, “honest” conversation, and strong feelings of involvement (interdependence) with your partner. The lack of alcohol, at least for a period of time, removes many of these things along with the drink, and we’re left only with the isms of alcoholism referenced above. To face these isms during that first year is tough; but to continue to face them for periods of time further out can be devastating to the partner.

How do we deal with them? I’ve only seen two successful ways. One is to leave. It’s not quite that simple. Leaving involves a long and careful process – usually with professional help of some kind – to ensure you know exactly what you want and need to do, that you are prepared to do it, and that you have all of the support you need to leave. So this isn’t a quick and easy answer, but I do want to put it on the table as an option.

The second is to embrace your support system or program and take the focus off of the alcoholic and place it onto yourself. It is possible to remain in an alcoholic relationship and find happiness in your own life. But it takes a lot of work to get there and I’ve never met anyone who could do it on their own. Very occasionally, a recovering alcoholic will find a pink cloud, which means they will immediately understand their disease and be able to overcome it without torturing those around them who love them. But that is extremely rare. Mostly, alcoholics get and stay in recovery slowly, painfully, and effecting those closest to them. That is why it is said the alcoholism is the family disease. It effects far more than the alcoholic, and you all need help and healing.

If I were around a dry drunk all of the time I’m not sure I would want to remain in that relationship. However whether this was permanent or temporary condition of someone I chose to be with, I would focus all of my energy on learning how to support and focus on myself during those periods. As for the dry drunk behaviour, remember the three C’s:

I didn’t cause it.
I can’t control it.
I can’t cure it.

All I can do during these dry drunk periods is to take care of me. And I’m worth it.

This started with the person who was closest to me for many years. When I was married to an alcoholic, I sometimes felt like an extension of his actions. If he did something awful in public, he might be too inebriated or ego-bound to care but I was certainly embarrassed. If he said something unfeeling toward our friends, I worried about how this might affect my own relationship with them in future. There seemed to be no separation between what he did and how it would affect my life. On the contrary: there was a direct and immediate correlation.
An important part of my healing process was to take back myself. Feel my feelings. Be responsible for my actions and to stop feeling responsible for the words or actions of another. This might sounds easy and obvious for someone who hasn’t been in our shoes, but we know that what I’ve described is one of the hardest things we’ve had to learn. And the lesson continues.

My boyfriend is an amazing, caring, intelligent human being. I couldn’t ask to be with a more wonderful person, and I don’t think I could be loved or treated better by anyone than I am by him. Yet it can be challenging to be with him at times because he is a nurturer, and an enabler at heart. He has a long history (with his ex-wife who is no longer in his life, and with her four children who very much are, and with many of his friends) of being the person to whom everyone turns when they have an issue or need. And he’s inevitably the solution. He helps gracefully, with love, but also with control. This is where he is comfortable, but this part of him is not comfortable with me. I listen to his advice but do not always take it. I set boundaries and stick to them, whereas he is used to moving boundaries frequently to accommodate others. He therefore sees my boundaries as judgement instead of discernment or self care. By way of example, he has a work acquaintance who would like to be our new best friend. This person triggers me because I see in her the isms of undiagnosed alcoholism and I don’t feel she is a safe person for me to be around. But I’m perfectly happy for my boyfriend to maintain a friendship with her, which probably needs to happen as he sees her at work and she’s become good friends with his best friend. But my boyfriend believes this would be awkward (and it might be, as I’ve said no to attending a number of dinner parties with his best friend in order to avoid socializing with this person) so he is irritated by what he perceives to be my judgement of her creating an awkwardness in his life.

We are taught that love is about compromise, and to a degree it is. But those who have been close to an alcoholic have lived a life so compromised only on our own sides that in the end we have completely lost touch with ourselves. Coming out the other side of our own illness, we protect our boundaries and individuality with the fervour of a reformed smoker protecting their right to smoke-free air. If we are zealots about our boundaries, it’s because the release of them feels like a slippery slope to us: we fear we could too easily wind up back living someone else’s life, forgoing our own emotions and needs for those of someone else. It is our equivalent of the alcoholic’s one beer after work. We might not be able to stop ourselves.

Still, a relationship requires that the needs of both people be respected and addressed. So I’ve decided that I will attend the odd function with this other person and test gentle exposure to her. Perhaps I can limit her emotional impact on me over time. I will do this for my boyfriend because I love him, and in addition to protecting my own health, I also wish for his happiness and I know that will entail occasionally accompanying him to dinner at his best friend’s house.

This is not something I would have attempted earlier in my own recovery, but I’ll consider it the equivalent to an alcoholic finding the strength to visit the bar with friends after work and trusting that they can stick with soda and not be pulled back down into well practiced and destructive behaviours. I’ll do this because I believe this relationship is worth it. But I’ll approach this carefully, appreciating that this is a compromise and that the first aim should be the maintenance of my self care. Because I know that I’m worth keeping healthy.

Knowing what they are about to go through I reached out to them with compassion and offers to stand by them and help in any way I can. In return, I received attempts at control, a realization that their relationship was of little consequence, and a confirmation that their ego was still in charge. No humbleness, no admittance of guilt or remorse, no request for forgiveness for their betrayal of me. In other words, they confirmed their diagnoses of addiction, and proved that they were very much still in the early stages of potential recovery.

So why was I so disappointed? We who have lived with an alcoholic truly understand that admittance of the problem is only step one. It is not a sign of health, but rather a confirmation of issue. I guess I was hoping for the incredibly dramatic outing of their illness and resultant behaviours to produce more immediate results in the form of humility. Instead, their ego kicked in and they used whatever powers they had left to manipulate the situation – and then tried to manipulate me when I offered help. And so my ego also kicked in. I should be above that, after all. I’ve lived through this. I know what they are about to go through. They should listen to me and accept the help I offre, shouldn’t they?

Truth is, I have been through it and I didn’t like it much. I’m tired of being there for an addict, and of being tolerant of their intolerable behaviours. I’m tired of dealing with the inherited isms of their father in my children, and the enablement behaviours I see so clearly in my boyfriend. I would just like to hang out for a while in a world that doesn’t include addictive behaviours. Unfortunately, I recall the statistic I once read that said as much as 40% of America suffers from some form of addiction, be it to alcohol, drugs, sex, spending or gambling. And each individual probably suffers from more than one, because it’s not the substance or activity of choice but the underlying behaviours that make an addict. So it’s inescapable. It’s all around us.

There is no escaping; addiction and the isms relating to it can and will hit us from every angle, and probably for most of our lives. But we do have choices in how we deal with it. What’s left for me is the 3 C’s mantra: I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, and I can’t cure it. Ultimately, the healthy reaction from me is to focus on dealing only with my own side of the street. Set boundaries, maintain responsibility for myself, and live my life with compassion.