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.

And for those who aren’t yet worried about aging of Alzheimer’s, you’ll be pleased to know that physical exercise also helps the brain improve on “executive functions” such as multi-tasking, prioritizing, and refocusing mid-activity.

In addition to entertaining and educating me on a Sunday morning, the program also reminded me of an important lesson I’ve learned: there is always something that can be done to improve your situation.

Changing the things I can: this second line in the serenity prayer seems like a no-brainer to us supporters of alcoholics. We’ve spent a lifetime making things happen, keeping life running smoothly, and dealing with the impossible. The problem is that we tend to fix the things that should remain broken (so they can be dealt with by the people who really need to deal with them); and we tend to feel helpless with making the changes and taking the steps necessary in order to heal ourselves. That’s why we need a strong support group around us to gently or firmly encourage us to put the focus back on ourselves, and then to take steps to cause our own situational improvement.

Why is it that when it comes to our own situations, we’d rather go into battle for someone else then do something good for ourselves? It’s because we’ve been programmed to believe that we are not worthy of being properly taken care of – by others or even by ourselves. That programming needs to leave us. It no longer serves. In its place, we should get curious about who we are, what we need and want, how we feel, where we are going. This journey might involve getting access to new information that causes us to re-think our belief systems. It also might involve trial and error. Last night I talked my teenage son through making a full dinner. It was painstaking in that he seemed to need to ask questions about every tiny little detail, including steps that I would assume would be intuitive. But I had to remind myself that this was new territory for him, and that I could best help him by being patient, compassionate, and giving of my time and information. He made a great meal, and I think he was proud of having done it.

I took some time afterwards to think about how I had felt during the process, and I had to admit that part of my frustration had stemmed from the fact that when I was his age and having to learn things, I received almost no help from my parents. They were busy, raising five children with not enough money to do so. There were lots of great things about my childhood and I don’t want to depict it as all bad. . Still, they were incapable of doing things that frankly, required no money. For example, they never ensured I brushed my teeth each morning and evening, resulting in considerable and frightening dental work needing to be done by the time I was in grade school. And they had very little patience for teaching me anything. So I struggled through learning to sew and garden either on my own, or by quietly watching them. It would have been so much easier and nicer to have been nurtured through this growth. Yet when the time comes for me to offer that nurturing to my boys, I tend to get impatient and frustrated with their questions.

This is a loving universe, and it gives us many gentle opportunities to learn and to practice that learning. In the past twenty-four hours, I’ve learned that there are steps I can take to significantly improve my brain function; and that I need to work harder on reprogramming my nurturing skills around my sons so that I do not simply copy how my parents raised me.
God, grant me the courage to change the things I can.

It shows itself in small ways. For example, when I’m home he has to check in on me every so often.  He’ll get up from whatever he’s doing and wander through the house or garden until he finds me.  Then, reassured that I’m there, he’ll go back to his activity.  If I’m on a long call on my bedroom phone, he’ll find some excuse to pop in to speak with me every twenty minutes or so.  Whenever he needs to touch base with me, it doesn’t matter if he sees the telephone against my ear, or if I’m in a conversation with another person.  He simply charges in and talks to me as if he’s the only one that matters. 

A friend refers to this as my son “getting grounded” by connecting with me.  My son feels abandoned by one parent, so must feel a strong and frequent connection with the other.  With that connection established, he feels safe enough to explore his world again. 

This behavior began even before their father left.  It was apparent for many years leading up to his departure that their father was not a stable or reliable parent.  My children knew where to go to ask questions, get help, plan activities, and generally get things done.  It is only now, years later, that I am realizing the extent to which they relied on me for so very many years.  But back then, there was the façade of two parents.  Now with just me, my younger son’s needs and insecurities are more obvious.   It was far more acute right after their father left.  If I so much as sneezed, both children would look at me with fear in their eyes.  If I had a headache or was in a bad mood, they would become worried and listless, following me around with their eyes if not their bodies, watching for signs of possible incapacity.  I’m not surprised.  For some time now, I’ve been “it” for them, their only responsible adult.  But in time, my eldest learned to trust that life would continue on in some fashion.  I’ve always tried to make a point of admitting when I was wrong, in part as a way to highlight that I’m not perfect and that I might not always make the best decisions but that did not mean that the sky would fall. 

My youngest is not so easily convinced.  He seems to live under the constant threat of catastrophe.  He speaks up if he feels I’m driving too fast.  He calls me if he feels I’ve been away from home longer than he had anticipated.  He’ll turn to me whenever live doesn’t go smoothly, and ask me in a worried tone “what’s going to happen now?!”  Sometimes, he acts out his fear through anger and frustration.  When he gets this way, it’s challenging for him to get his emotions under control quickly.  He generally needs time to feel his fear, and then get past it.

But the good news is, he is indeed getting past it.  Instinctively, when he has exhibited these types of behaviors I have never turned him away and told him to grow up.   He’s trying to do just that; but he was hit by an emotional two by four at an impressionable age, so he’s going about it much more carefully now.   My job is to show him compassion and understanding, and allow him to grow past this at his own pace.  This doesn’t mean he gets away with inappropriate behavior.  But I do cut him some slack.  The children of an alcoholic are not shaped by cookie cutters.  They have different personalities and they deal with their situations each according to their own challenges and strengths. But they all have in common the fact that they have been affected by the alcoholic, and probably need a lot of understanding, and perhaps a little extra patience.

This being the end of the school year, parents like me are starting to receive report cards for their children.   Grades, test scores and other reporting information from the school allow us to track the degree of scholastic accomplishment of our kids.  As a single working mom, I’m not as attuned to their daily accomplishments as I’d like to be, so I’ve come to rely on periodic report cards.  This year, I was not happy.  My kids have just finished grades 9 and 11 respectively.  With one or two exceptions, they did not do well in their courses.  In fact, both of them came extremely close to failing at least one subject, and the average for many of their other classes was a “C”.  I would be less upset if there weren’t extremely bright children, more than capable of achieving straight A’s but lazy enough to feel it’s acceptable to just get by.

Over the past two years, I have been slowly expanding my horizons and starting to build a bit of a life for myself again, after having lived for so long entirely for other people.  I’ve started to go out with friends more often, date, and developed more personal interests.  As a result, I haven’t had the same amount of time to dedicate to the micromanaging of my childrens’ studying; but as they were well into their teenage years, I figured they could start to learn some self-responsibility.  I get up early in the morning and thus, have to go to bed before them, so we agreed on a reasonable shut-off time for their computers and the TV which they almost never adhered to.  If I took away their keyboards as punishment, they would secretly find replacements.  I would ask them every night if they had homework, or a test coming up, and they almost never did.  Occasionally I would hear at the last minute about a major assignment due and I would have to drop everything to help them complete it.   So I was angry although not surprised when, going into exam time, I learned from their math teachers of their abysmal marks, and that one son has missed 35 homework assignments throughout the year.  I wonder how many on-line play dates he had missed with his computer buddies? Probably not a one.

Alcoholics take a very long time to grow up.  They challenge all rules, believing themselves to be beyond rules.  They stretch boundaries as much as possible, and make endless excuses for their own behaviours.  When things don’t work out well as a result, they blame everyone around them but themselves.  This is an excellent description of my ex-husband during his bad drinking years.  I never want this to be an accurate description of my children, but left unchecked, that is where they are headed. 

So with help from my program, and a dear friend who is a fabulous teacher, I’ve decided on the following:

This summer, we will have very strict rules in the house with respect to use of computers, chores, expectations regarding interactivity (eat dinner at the table, take time to see friends).  Both kids will also be attending remedial summer school to ensure that they fully understand their previous year’s math program.  That’s called logical consequences.   In September, their computers will be disassembled and removed from their rooms.  They will have access to my computer (which will not house games) for ½ hour per day for social networking, provided their chores and homework are done.  I will also create a positive re-enforcement program: for   or A mark they receive for a test or project, they will get a star.  Once they collect ten stars, they will win a prize that we will agree on beforehand.  My teacher friend has explained to me that children who do not yet have intrinsic (or internal) motivation require extrinsic (external) motivation.  In time, they will develop an intrinsic desire to do well in their studies but until then, it’s OK and actually encouraged by educators to reward them.  And frankly, I’d rather reward than punish them.

Which brings me to my last point.  The person in this family who probably needs to modify their behaviours the most is me.  My children are clearly not ready for self-responsibility.  And I clearly have allowed them to be on their own too much and for too long, and enforced very few consequences so that they learn self-responsibility.  When I went to puppy training school, it quickly became apparent that the training was really for me.  I get the sense that parenting the children of alcoholics requires the same primary focus on myself.   Why am I not surprised? : )

Children can also be amazingly resilient.  With love, understanding and patience, we can all recover from virtually anything.  It also helps to appreciate that children of an alcoholic are not rare.  A friend of mine who has served as a counselor in the local school system suggests that in her experience, as much as 80% of any given neighborhood is probably comprised of families with some form of dysfunction (certainly not all of that involves alcoholism, but undoubtedly it’s in there).  We’re all in pain and we all act out in some way.  Nobody is perfect.  There is a lot of pretending going on out there.  I’ve always preferred to be honest about a situation, and then deal with it head-on. 

To better understand their father’s condition and how it might have affected them, my children and I attended a half-day information session at their father’s recovery centre while he was there.  They were 11 and 13 at the time.  Consequently, one of them decided that when he comes of age, he will drink moderately, but not drug.  The other has decided he will not drink or drug at all.  Since then, they have had their eyes opened about the disease and its ongoing effect on their dad, despite the fact that he is no longer drinking.  We discuss it openly, and I answer their questions with fairness and honesty.   There’s no guarantee that these efforts will keep them safe from addiction, but what I can say is that now two and a half years after their initial declaration regarding alcohol and drugs, their conviction remains.   

Our initial role as parents is to love and support our children as they slowly learn to become self-responsible.  I believe we do this best when we provide them – age appropriately – with the tools to understand their challenges, and the support and encouragement to overcome them.  If we pretend those challenges don’t exist, or if we minimize them, we may be placing their current or future health at risk.  If we really want to help the children of an alcoholic, I suggest it be with love and honesty.