A very dear friend has recently come to recognize that her partner is a full-blown alcoholic, very much caught in the throes of the disease and not resting on the periphery, as he would have everyone believe. The realization came to her at first through snippets of facts that were difficult to dispute. But once a bit of the truth came to light, numerous pieces of evidence tumbled into her life an avalanche. Very quickly, there was no more denying that the life she and her partner had been living was based on many lies and manipulations.
When she realized the extent of the deception, she made the decision that she could not have this man in her life for the time being. It was a decision I fully supported, but not for the same reasons that she made it.
My friend is devastated by deceit of her partner. This has been amplified over the past two weeks as friends and co-workers realize the game is up, and are coming forward with more “helpful” information on the real story that has been hidden from my friend – or that she chose not to see – over the past several years. With every new realization of a different treachery, she feels a new pocket of pain that she must process. SOAs often refer to this process as the peeling back of an onion – there are always more layers and as each one is stripped away, it will bring with it some tears.

Her friends and acquaintances are not meaning to be cruel. Most people honestly care, and simply want to help by helping to identify the truth. But they don’t feel such honesty will be welcomed when the relationship is still “stable” because they don’t want to be the one to rock the boat. So they wait until there are signs that they might be believed. Unfortunately, this results in their moments of truth arriving at times of our greatest vulnerability. The SOA can then feel that not only were they lied to by their alcoholic, but their friends and co-workers as well. And they wouldn’t be wrong. In this way, the onion continues to be peeled, painful layer by painful layer, until we feel like the world we are living in must be a completely different one from where we’ve been all of these years. And if that was false, then what else is false? Can I trust anyone, including myself (after all, I picked this person and lived the lie for so long)? Am I, in fact, unlovable?

This catastrophic thought process if very natural in our circumstances and seems to be a process we need to go through. But try not to wallow in it. Instead, try to focus on these thoughts:

1. Alcoholism is a disease that has infected my partner. I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it and I can’t cure it. That means that everything the alcoholic has done was his doing, not mine;
2. That said, the alcoholism has affected me. I can’t control or cure the alcoholic, but I can effect changes in myself.

My friend decided that at least for the time being, she should split from her partner. It was a decision I fully supported because I feel she needs to time and space to focus on herself, and he needs the time and space to seek help and try to start dealing with his own issues. It is not always necessary for there to be separation in order for an SOA to begin the healing process; but it is quite usual that an alcoholic would benefit from time in a professional recovery centre. At any rate, the first step in healing ourselves is to only take responsibility for ourselves, not the alcoholic. We start by taking the focus off of them and placing it on ourself.

We cannot sleep all of the time. Most of what we call “life” takes place during our waking hours. Initially, moving from our dark, warm bed into the cold light of day can be a frightening prospect. But an awake life is more honest and real. Facing our issues – hopefully with a good support program behind us – is the ultimate love for yourself. It says “I know things are tough right now, but I am worthy of a better life and I’m going to work at getting to that”. When we wake up and face our issues, we put ourselves on the road to recovery and we know that despite the pain of healing, a better life awaits us because an awake life brings us so much more than pain. An awake life also brings us satisfaction, happiness, love and joy.

Many of us may have considered for an extended period of time whether or not our alcoholics are truly addicts, or simply difficult or somewhat irrational people. This consideration occurs privately and self-consciously because we don’t want to appear unloyal. We are in a relationship with these people because we love them (or loved them) and they are interconnected with our lives in some way that we want to continue. But eventually, we have to admit that perhaps their actions are different than the actions of other people – more normal people. We begin to see some things we didn’t recognize before: that they might not be telling the truth, entirely; that they seem to be overly judgemental about certain people we are close to; that they seem to need a lot of attention, often just when our attention is needed by our children, at work, or by close family and friends. We start to see patterns in their moods: they may get agitated during certain parts of the day, or become not bothered or angry but actually incensed when they don’t get their way. They may behave in a passive aggressive manner in order to structure the world around them according to their own emotional needs at any given time. Or you may recognize a complete lack of patterns: they come and go at odd times without being clear on what they are doing; they say one thing and do another, but get angry and blame you in some way if you bring this to their attention. They seem to go to extremes in everything: they sleep for ten to twenty hours a day; they obsess about a hobby; they have to eat the entire bag of cookies; they need to exercise for hours and hours each day, pushing themselves to new limits all of the time.

All of these can be classified under the category of alcoholic/addictive “isms” but they could just as easily be the actions of someone who is not abusing. There could be a mental health issue, the individual might be an eccentric, or they might just be a jerk. Perhaps they are someone who is simply going through a rough patch and needs some TLC and a counsellor. There are many possible explanations for their behaviours, which is why analyzing the isms in a potential alcoholic is not the task that you should focus on. Instead, place the focus on yourself to see if you are developing isms that suggest you are in an unhealthy environment.

For example:
• Do you feel you have to manage every aspect of your life, your household and the lives of those around you or things will fall apart?
• If your potential alcoholic is your partner, are you their lover or their mother?
• Do you have an obsessive need for information?
• Do you sacrifice your own needs (sleep, hygiene, food, recreation) in order to keep the status quo at home?
• Do you feel like you are the only one who is keeping the family and home together – and maybe even the only one who cares about doing so?
• Do you feel like you are normally a strong person who can handle the burden that has become your life, but every so often, you just lose it?
• Do you have a hard time asking for help (because no one can do it as well as you, because someone as strong as you should not need help, because you’re embarrassed that someone might find out why you might need help)?

These are all signs of your own isms that usually result from having an unhealthy person in your life. You are essentially reacting to the acts of that unhealthy person. And your reaction, you will come to realize, is not taking you to a happy, safer place. It is taking you to an unhappier and less stable place all the time, because you are becoming unhealthier while at the same time, the addict is in a spiral downward. From everything I’ve seen and read, there is no such thing as an active addict in a holding pattern. They are always worsening. While it is true that they can live for quite some time as a functioning alcoholic or addict, in reality their body is being worn down by their addiction and it is taking more and more of the stimulant to get them to the same level of “high”. They are declining and with them, there’s unfortunately a chance that you are, too. Your own isms will increase in intensity over time, until you come to a place of realization of helplessness. You don’t want to go there if you can help it.

You cannot stop their downward decline. They likely need an outsider – one who’s walked in their shoes – to do this with them. You cannot help them. But you can help yourself.

Learn whatever you can about alcoholism and the isms of those connected with an alcoholic. Find a program and a support network. Take the focus off of your alcoholic’s isms and place it on your own. By doing this, you will start on a very positive and healing journey toward your own sanity and eventual happiness. With luck, the alcoholic will catch up and join you there one day.

My life is complicated. While the alcoholic is no longer in my life (although he does occasionally touch base with our children), I’ve traded the chaos that used to be for the structured craziness which is my new normal. My teenage sons are increasingly self-sufficient, although they live at home. Whether it is their personalities or the experience of being abandoned by a parent, they seem slow to grow up entirely. If left on their own for more than a few days when I travel for business, they stop eating vegetables, forget to do their chores and look after the animals only when prompted by a hungry dog or cat. The house is usually a mess when I arrive home, and they seem to breathe a sigh of relief when they hear me run a bath or do my laundry – safe, sound and around.

My boyfriend, while mostly at my place, has a house of his own 100km’s away. Close by are his four step children and now four grandchildren, all good reasons for him to make the trek home several times a week to feed his cat, water his plants and visit with family. I try to spend the weekend there with him at least once a month.

I work full time, run a very part time consulting practice, and for extra money to help this single mom pay the rent I also take in international students. My job requires that I travel six or seven times per year, usually to other parts of Canada although not for very long stays.

Most days and evenings I feel like I’m running from obligation to necessity, squeezing in fun (like skiing, going to a movie or having dinner with friends) between activities I’ve planned to help me maintain my health (pilates) and my sense of self (singing lessons).

Very seldom do I simply have a night to myself.

When my alcoholic husband left me with the kids, an enormous mortgage and an uncomfortable amount of debt, my focus was on survival. I worked hard to ensure I would keep a steady income, and I dedicated the rest of my life to ensuring that my kids had two parents in one. For several years, aside from attending my regular support group meetings I did very little for myself. But in time, my sponsor taught me that an important part of my own recovery was to learn how to put myself first.

This is an uncomfortable concept for many SOAs. We are experts at martyrdom. We seem to believe that our purpose in life is to support those around us. So learning to suppress this immediate instinct and take care of ourselves FIRST is a challenge. But I’ve learned that it is a vitally important concept to embrace. My sister helped to reinforce this learning by referencing the airplane safety videos that advise parents – in the event of a loss of air pressure – to put a mask on themselves before helping dependents. My sister reminded me that my children completely relied on me to be healthy and even happy. It was incumbent on me to ensure that I was taking whatever steps were needed to work toward my health and happiness, for their sake as well as my own.

This is a classic example of how to get an SOA to do something for themselves – tell them they should do it for other people. I stopped smoking, so many years ago, when research showed the terrible effects of second hand smoke. And I learned to look after myself first when I realized my sister was right…I was the only one taking care of me and if I didn’t do it, my children might be at risk.

So today, I remembered that when in doubt, I should put myself first. I will not be jumping in the car to make the long drive to my boyfriend’s house. If he wants to come here, he’s welcome to do so. But my first choice has to be for my own sanity. I’ve lived the other way and it didn’t work out so well!

(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.

The first of this three-post series on loving detachment focussed on the overall concept of loving the addict while at the same time making the decision NOT to support the addict in their addiction. The last post focused on physical detachment from the alcoholic. Physical detachment in this instance means no longer enabling addictive behaviour. We do this by allowing the addict to make their own choices, and feeling the results of those choices. In this post, we focus on emotional detachment, which is the change in ourselves that is needed in order to allow us to practice loving detachment.

When we love someone, it is very natural and human to want to protect that person. This protection instinct ensures our genetic survival, and so is deeply engrained in us. This parenting instinct is particularly strong in supporters of alcoholics. More often than not, we find that they seek our personalities out when looking for a partner. They need someone who is prepared to care for them, looked out for them, take responsibility for their actions, and clean up their messes. But unlike children, they never grow up. Their dependence on us only increases. We, in turn, are comfortable in the role of being needed, and through our actions – albeit very loving and altruistic actions – we encourage co-dependency.

In time, we find that our lives and even our personalities are almost completely geared toward enabling our addicts. Our sense of self becomes wrapped up with the alcoholic, as if their actions are our actions, their responsibilities are our responsibilities. In truth, depending on our relationship with the alcoholic we may indeed be very affected by what they do – so there is good reason to want to protect ourselves from the worst of the addict’s actions. Our finances may be tied, and we may be legally tied to the actions of our addicts. We need to set boundaries and protect ourselves and we’ll get there… but first we need to develop the strength and wisdom of our own person. We need to re-establish our independence emotionally, find our own personality again, feel our own feelings again. We need to emotionally detach ourselves from our addict and become ourselves again.

When I was in the throes of supporting the chaos of life with an alcoholic, I didn’t know how I was feeling that day until he woke up and set the mood for the house. If you had asked me my favourite colour I would not have been able to tell you. If you asked me what had happened that day, I would probably have told you about the day of my alcoholic. I was totally lost in his life, and all of my decisions were made from that fuzzy spot. I knew that before I could truly practice loving detachment, I needed to detach myself from my addict emotionally.

We do that by taking the focus off of the alcoholic and putting it onto ourselves. Those who regularly read my blog know that for a number of years, I was helped by a Shaman. She encouraged me to focus on my femininity as a way of rediscovering myself. I bought myself some new, feminine clothes. I painted my toe nails for the first time in my life (!) I hung out with girlfriends or my sisters. I read books that I wanted to read and I watched movies that I wanted to see. I explored who I was, apart from my alcoholic. I started to live at least some of my life for myself. In time, this space allowed me to create an emotional separation in my mind between my personality and actions, and those of my alcoholic. That, in turn, eventually enabled me to let him make his own choices, and live with the consequences. Eventually, I had the strength to establish and hold to certain boundaries. And at some point, my boundaries and change in behaviour forced my alcoholic to realize that he couldn’t carry on the way he had, and seek out help. By then, I was strong and independent enough to be able to care for my children, and manage my job and my household, while my alcoholic started the long road to potential recovery.

In truth, I probably wouldn’t have been ready for him to focus on himself if I hadn’t taken the time first to learn how to focus on myself. And he likely wouldn’t have made the choice to work toward recovery as long as I was carrying him, physically and emotionally.

The concept of loving detachment, and how to practice it, can’t be adequately covered in a blog, but hopefully this three-part series has given you a taste of the elements of loving detachment and how to practice it. For those who would appreciate more detail, I am writing a book on the concept and hope to have it published by the early summer. Stay tuned to this blog for the book launch announcement.

As I mentioned in my last bog, loving detachment doesn’t require that you physically leave your alcoholic. You don’t need to separate from a spouse or kick an alcoholic child out of the home if these are actions you do not want to take. You can remain physically close to them and still gain sanity and even peace. Even if you live apart from the alcoholic and want to show love and support but not enable their illness, then the concept of loving detachment will help.

Physical detachment in this case refers to the detachment by you of any actions which will support the addict in their addiction. In order to understand why this is important you must accept two probabilities: 1. that to some degree, the alcoholic is able to live a functioning life as an addict because you help to make that possible; and 2. that their healing must start with them taking full accountability for their choices and actions. If you do not honestly believe these two probabilities, then it will be difficult to accept the logical consequences of loving detachment: that you must let go of your control of the alcoholic and allow them to make their own choices, and suffer the consequences, if they are ever to have a hope of getting better.

We carry our alcoholics, daily. They might as well be physically on our backs, with their legs dangling heavily down behind us and their arms wrapped tightly around our necks. And because we’ve allowed the vision of ourselves as a functioning couple to be one that is interlaced and co-dependent, we believe that it is our duty in the relationship to carry them. Without our super human strength, the relationship would fall apart, the family would cease to function, and the world as we know it would stop. One of the most powerful things my sponsor ever said to me was “maybe the world as you know it should stop”.

We may be super human, but we are not Gods. We cannot change another human being. We may be able to manipulate them to modify their behaviour for a short period. We can encourage them to lie to us in order to maintain equilibrium for a time. We can move the world around them to give their lives (and ours) the perception of balance. But we can’t change another human being. The only person we can change is ourselves. The only dynamic we can change in a relationship is ours.

Perhaps the most loving part of loving detachment is the love it forces us to give to ourselves by taking back our own person and physically separating our actions and responsibilities from those of the alcoholic. We are only responsible for living our own lives. And we are, in fact, worthy of living our own lives. We are not responsible for the alcoholic, whether they are our spouse, child, parent or our best friend. We did not dent the car. We did not forget our son’s birthday. We did not miss work today. They did. Will those things happen if we do not take on the responsibility of ensuring they don’t? Perhaps. Will life be a bit more difficult for us if we stop intercepting, smoothing over, neutralizing the actions of the alcoholics? Perhaps. Then again, living for two lives – one ridiculously over-functioning and one not functioning at all – has hardly been easy on us. By choosing a different kind of difficult, we are at least choosing one that has a hope of changing for the better at some point, of resulting in healing – for the alcoholic and, you’ll realize with time, for ourselves.

“Physical detachment” in loving detachment means physically detaching yourself from enabling the alcoholic before, during and after their addict-resulting actions. It means becoming your own person again, not one that is joined at the hip with your alcoholic. It means allowing them to make their own choices, and to be responsible for their own actions. It means giving them a chance to start the long road to recovery. If they are going to buy alcohol and drink, so be it. If they are going to sleep in and miss work, so be it. If they are going to pass out in the hallway, so be it.

Will these things possibly affect you in some way? Probably. This is the reason that those who love an alcoholic need a support program. We learn ways to protect ourselves, to set boundaries and consequences and to stick with them, to ensure that while our addict is deciding whether or not they want to get better, we are doing what we can to improve and support our own lives.

I’m not suggesting that it won’t be difficult, embarrassing or scary to allow the alcoholic to live their own life. But in my experience, addiction only goes in one direction: down. As long as they choose to continue in their addiction, they will go downhill. If you choose to continue to enable them, you are helping them to get there and they may even take you and your family with them. By detaching your actions, responses and choices from theirs, you will start to protect yourself AND allow them to feel the weight of their choices, which is the only thing I know of that helps an addict to start to realize the impact of their actions and even make the choice to live in a different way.

When I discovered the concept of loving detachment, I was pretty close to my own bottom. I had had just about all I could take. My boundaries, my morals, my value systems had been tested to the limit. I knew that I could physically continue to find a way to balance my family’s life; but I could no longer live with the emotional and spiritual toll it was taking on me to do so. My alcoholic clearly loved his alcohol more than anything or anyone on earth, including me and his children. I was holding our family together so he could continue to practice his love for alcohol, and his disdain for us. Something had to change and I knew that I only had control over me.

Oddly enough, the most difficult part of physically detaching myself from the actions of my alcoholic was the requisite accompanying emotional detachment.
More on this in the next post

According to Google Analytics, the #1 search phrase that draws people to my site and blog is “loving detachment”, and I think I know why. When we are in crisis and trying to find help, it doesn’t take long for someone to tell us that phrase and encourage us to embrace the concept. So we search for more information on loving detachment on the internet in the hopes of finding help for our immediate pain.

The most important thing to learn about loving detachment is that it is about you, not your alcoholic. Most recovery programs for supporters of addicts will tell you to take the focus in your life off of the addict and put it back onto you. This seems counter-intuitive to people who seek help. After all, we’ve survived life with an alcoholic by being super controlling. When that stops working, we seek out ways to gain back more control over the addict. So to hear that this isn’t the path to sanity feels like the emphasis is in the wrong place. Soon, we learn the three C’s: I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, I can’t cure it. And if that’s the case, then what tools do I have left to get out of where I am today? Because where I am today is simply too painful a place to continue to be. The answer is “loving detachment”.

Most simply, loving detachment is giving yourself permission to continue to love the addict in your life, while learning how to limit their ability to affect you both physically and emotionally.

Like most behaviour modifications, this one takes patience and practice, but it is achievable and life is far more sane and even happy once it can be achieved – whether the addict is still in addiction or not.

Of course, finding sanity in the middle of chaos is not necessarily an easy thing to achieve. In fact, I am writing a book about this process that will be published in 2012 (check this blog for the launch announcement around summer). But for now, during the month of December I will post three blogs dedicated to the topic (this being the first), to help you get started.

Let’s start with a definition of “detachment”. This doesn’t mean that you have to leave your alcoholic husband, or separate rooms from your alcoholic wife. Nor does it mean that you are required to ignore the presence of an addict son or daughter. Those actions hardly seem loving and supportive. But it does mean that you need to set boundaries around what you are and are not willing for put up with. It means that you place more emphasis on your own actions, thoughts and feelings. And it means that you stop trying to minimize the impact of the addicts behaviour so that they can begin to feel the consequences of their actions.

For many of us, the concept of detachment is a difficult one because we still love the alcoholic and want to protect them. The concept of loving detachment separates those two ideas. We can still love them, but by protecting them, we have actually been enabling them to remain in addiction. In loving detachment, our words and actions tell them “I love you, and I’m not going to support your drinking anymore, or cover up the consequences for you”.

Alcoholics before and early in recovery hate loving detachment because it limits their control of you and the situation. They maintain control through dysfunction, chaos, lying, and by having someone around them who can keep the world running relatively smoothly despite the trouble they are causing. When you step back from that role, they may accuse you of not loving them. It’s important to re-enforce with your words and your actions that you do love them. Ask them how their day is going, make their dinner, do their laundry, continue with whatever you do normally to demonstrate you care. But don’t make excuses to their boss when they don’t show up for work. Don’t apologize to the neighbour when the alcoholic dents their car. Don’t pick the alcoholic off the floor where they’ve passed out and escort them to a warm bed. Learn how to say (and act) “I love you and I’m not going to support your drinking anymore” and mean both of those things.

The two next posts will focus on what it looks like to physically detach from supporting their addiction; and what it means to emotionally detach and find peace and even joy for yourself.

We can’t necessarily stop bad things from happening, but we can certainly send positive and negative energy out there into the Universe. So instead of continuing with this expression of negativity, I paused and asked myself why I was feeling this way. My shaman has said that worries about death are often a masking of worries about life…so what in my life was I really afraid of? In time, I realized that what needed to die was my old life.

I am in a very good job but while I should probably have been promoted to the top position of my department given my years of experience and qualifications, I have not. I finally had to admit that for whatever reason, it simply wasn’t going to happen where I am. I needed to let go of the dream that, if I were to be honest with myself, I frankly didn’t want. I don’t want the additional stress, hours and travel. My kids, despite being in their teen years, seem to need me now more than ever. But in a few years they will be far more independent and my role as parent will have drastically changed. I want to enjoy my time with them right now. And my relationship with my boyfriend is wonderful and coming at a time in my life when I increasingly have the time and space to share with him. Yet I could sense myself holding back from fully committing to it. Viewing my life objectively, it seemed that everything had been beautifully converging to move me to a very healthy and happy place. The only thing “undone” was the redirection of my psyche.

By clinging to expectations (based on a prior iteration of my life) around my job, and holding onto feelings of frustration and anger around my previous relationship with the alcoholic, I was stuck between two different worlds. The old one needed to die so I could make the space to fully enjoy my new life potential. When I realized this, my fears for the impending travel dissipated. What’s more, this new belief that I have no control over a higher future with my company allowed me to lower my participation level in my meetings. I’m normally very engaged and vocal. This time, however, I was uncharacteristically quiet. As a result, I found my colleagues had a greater desire to get closer to me and we got to know each other better than ever before. I genuinely enjoyed myself on the trip!

It’s easy to allow fears to take over our lives. Our bodies crave the drama, but we are not well served by it. It really is our choice whether to allow the drama to take hold and make us miserable, or to understand that drama may be masking a life lesson. I remember that when I was in the throes of chaos with my alcoholic, it felt like everything I did was a necessary reaction to his actions. I really missed the concept of free choice. Now, through curiosity and self-reflection I found strength to make a positive choice for myself. It’s a nice feeling, and great to know that I didn’t need to die to get here!

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.

My youngest of two kids just started grade eleven. He’s been a slow starter in terms of developing a personal sense of responsibility for things like chores and homework. So when he asks me to help him with his homework (which means he’s actually doing his homework!) I readily agree. This week, he had to interview family members about their religious beliefs and experiences (he goes to a Catholic school). While I would describe myself as spiritual rather than religious, I answered as best as I could. But I faltered on the final question, which was “have you ever experienced a miracle and if so, please describe the experience”. My son insisted I was not allowed to reference the birth of my children, so I pondered other options and started to describe how grateful I was now for having successfully made it through the past four years of my life. “That’s not a miracle” he insisted. I disagreed and tried to explain, but quickly realized that I couldn’t defend my position with him because I’ve never told him the full story.

The truth is, my sons don’t know the depths of the pain I went through as a result of their father’s alcoholism. I have been as honest as I felt was appropriate, but I’ve also been aware that what happened with their father is my journey, not theirs. They are responsible for their own relationship with him, and it is not fair for me to taint that relationship by sharing with my sons in detail what their father put me through, what I put myself through, how close I came to not making it, and how incredibly different my life is now compared to that period of hell.

They were young, protected and have perhaps blocked some of their memories from those years. They know a little of what happened and they understand that I’ve been through a very trying period. For years they have seen me go off to my support group meetings, have encouraged me to do so. They are proud that I wrote and published a book about my experiences. But I have not allowed them to read it, although I’ve told them that at legal age, they can decide for themselves if they want to.

In fact, they’ve appeared so relatively unscathed by the entire process that it’s caused me a different worry. I don’t want them to think that being raised by a single parent is just fine. I know that sometimes it’s necessary, and single parents can make it work, but I don’t think it’s ideal. And I certainly don’t want to condone their father’s decision to move away and not participate in raising them. Most of all, I don’t want to raise men to believe that it’s acceptable for a father to opt out of the role. Yet I say nothing about this and this is my conundrum: how can I be honest about my circumstances, while allowing the kids to make up their own minds about their father?

Throughout my own recovery, one of my guiding principles has been the concept of “let go, let God”. I’ve learned that I don’t have to be in charge all of the time. Sometime, I can simply pray for the guidance toward the best possible circumstances, and then go with the flow, trusting that God is taking care of us. Whenever I have done this, we have been protected and even happier than I believe we would have been if I had enforced my own will instead.

So this summer as we planned our vacation time, for the first time I allowed the boys to visit their father in the States. Previously, I always insisted he vacation with them up here in Canada. In my opinion (and one shared by my sponsor), he simply wasn’t ready for the responsibility before. But his actions of late have suggested he is far more stable and responsible, so it felt like the right thing to do. And it was. He did a fabulous job of planning a wide range of activities for them. They went canoeing and para-gliding but also to the symphony, a play and an animation conference. The nine days the boys spent with him were well planned and beautifully executed, and the boys had a blast.

But on their return I noticed a difference in their behavior – especially by my youngest. He cleans his room and did his chores without reminders. When I ask him to do something, he does it immediately. He apologizes easily, and has hugged me and told me he loves me more in the past two months than in the past ten years. He is a new person, and a joy to live with. Why this sudden change? It’s not as if he had a terrible time with his father so is finally appreciative of me – or at least, not entirely. I do believe what I’m seeing is gratitude through a living amends. I think he realizes what I’ve done, what I continue to do, and he’s thanking me by becoming the nice person he always was, underneath the sadness and anger. Perhaps he is remembering more than I’ve been giving him credit for.

I suspect that he now understands and values my being there for him, constantly and lovingly. He gets the difference, aAnd I didn’t have to say a thing. I just had to love and nurture him the way I would have done whether his father was in his life, or not. I let go, let God, and instead of focusing on what his father wasn’t doing, I focused on what I could do. And that has turned out to be the best thing I could possibly do for my son. I’ve come to realize that my son’s metamorphosis, despite everything we’ve been through together, is the current miracle in my life.

In times of terrible dysfunction, it’s important to remember that if we do the work, focus on keeping our side of the street clean, and stop trying to micro-manage the lives of everyone around us, miracles do happen.