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Sex and the sober alcoholic--a healing guide and workbook

By Toby Rice Drews

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Underlying Issues that Hinder Recovery for Adult Children of Alcoholics

From: SEX AND THE SOBER ALCOHOLIC
Copyright by Toby Rice Drews

Chapter 3: Adult Children of Alcoholics: Guilt, Shame, Abuse and Isolation

“My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, He is my fortress, I will never be shaken.” (Ps. 62:1,2)

“My mother would put me in the tub. She would insist on it. Even when I got older. She would be brusque, and then she would throw a washcloth at me. Her face would get white, she would get pink spots on her cheeks, and she would stare at me. Finally, when I couldn’t take it any more, I screamed at her to get out. She never came into the bathroom, any more.” (The narrator is Chris, age fifty-three; his mother was an alcoholic who is now deceased.)

“No one mentioned sex. When I started dating, my mother just said, ‘Don’t!’ Back when I was a young teenager, and I babysat, a drunk grandfather brought me home (they were raising the children), and he’d let go of the steering wheel and giggle when I’d grab it so we wouldn’t have an accident, and then he would put his hands on me. I finally told my mother. She got very angry and told me it wasn’t true, that he ‘was from . . . family, a very good family in town.’ My mother took pills; tranquilizers.” (The narrator is Cyndie; her mother and father were alcoholics; both are now dead.)

Katya shared her story also: “I used to ‘get into’ light abuse, like spanking. I feel embarrassed about saying that now. And we ‘got into’ costumes. Well, we didn’t have any money for good costumes! Ours were pretty raggedy.” [We both laughed.] “And one day, my husband wanted to buy a surgeon’s table! I didn’t want to, because it didn’t go with the decor! And I was also worried that visitors might ask what it was for! I thought I couldn’t tell my AA sponsor about that! But, maybe I could; she’s a nurse!”

Obviously, what we needed in this interview was a little bit of humor to break the ice caused by her nervousness. Each of the people I was sitting with had shared their experiences in ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) meetings; but none had shared so deeply about their sexual and sensual feelings and experiences that they had always kept hidden from others – because of shame.

Shame, guilt, isolation – all to bizarre degrees – and rationalizations to keep them secret and to pretend that the feelings-on-top-of-the-feelings were the real ones.

“Not that I believe that we ACOAs have the corner on shame and guilt – but I do think we have it to greater extremes and for longer durations, and with more intensity, than do adults from functional homes.” This was Katya’s sister talking: the oldest of five children; blonde; medium height; about thirty-five pounds overweight; fifty-seven years old. Katya was as thin as her sister was heavy; she was very tall with dark hair and blue eyes. Katya was the youngest.

* * *

Toby: “Do you have the gut feeling, like I do, that most women today who get into embarrassing and humiliating and abusive situations with men, are adult children of alcoholics? I think that the women who lose the most self-esteem are ACOAs. Many other kids had some dose of self-esteem as they were growing up. They had it to start with.”

Katya: “I’m a recovering alcoholic as well as a recovering adult child of alcoholics. And in terms of sex, the only kind of sex I experienced as a young woman (before marriage and before sobriety) was with a mentor I had, on the job. He wanted me to hurt him, physically. And I got into that with him quite willingly.

“I’m only beginning to face what that means about myself. About the anger I suppressed since my infancy. I grew up with an alcoholic father whom I hated. This man – this mentor – I had complete contempt for, when I thought about him personally. When I looked at him only professionally, I had respect for him and liked him. But when I thought about him as a man – it was like something deep and dark and so angry happened inside of me.

“Since that ‘relationship,’ I’ve found the opposite experience. When I got sober and some of my anger melted, I found my husband, and now he and I are in a mirror-opposite of that prior experience. He abuses me. It seems that under the anger that made me feel so powerful, was a little girl who was frightened to death and needs to be punished for having been so angry – and for having some of that anger still there. And I say ‘needs to be punished’ because he doesn’t make me do this.

“I am a willing participant. I can only believe that I sort of like this because I am not yet healed from my childhood.

“I’ve never said this stuff before, and I didn’t even know that I felt it. Or thought it.”

We are all very quiet for a while.

Toby: “Were you in therapy during this time?”

Katya: “Yes.”

Toby: “Did it occur to you to say anything to the therapist?”

Katya: “It occurred to me that this was not okay with me even though it might be a valuable piece of information to tell a therapist. I was not able to; you’re the only person I have ever told. This is the first time I have told anyone.”

Cyndie: “When I was in therapy (somewhere between fifteen and twenty years before I got to AA), I remember I used to alternate between despairing time in therapy and feeling like I had to entertain my therapist. I wanted to be the best, the funniest, the wittiest, brightest patient the therapist ever had. And I considered myself a raconteur.

“I just sort of went through story after story that was wild. The ones that were not too humiliating. But if it was too humiliating and too disgusting without a redeeming, witty factor, I left it out. But, I was so ashamed of it. And, I’m thinking about me as an ACOA and other people I’ve talked to who are ACOAs, that we get ourselves into more self-shaming things than do other people who admitted they were alcoholics – but who did not grow up in alcoholic families. Even if they were drinking at the time, they didn’t seem to get into such scummy, humiliating things. The sense of shame – I didn’t even realize the depth of shame I had when I got sober. I remember hearing people talking about shame. And, I said ‘shame?’ It seemed totally irrelevant to me.”

Katya: “I don’t think I ever did anything because of fear I would be abandoned, but that might have entered into it. Maybe that was part of it. Every time I saw this man I felt totally humiliated. Yet, there was something I wasn’t willing to give up. I mean I could have told him to go fly a kite any time, but that relationship lasted until ten years ago. That’s how long it went on. Eleven years! That’s a long time. Oddly enough, he contacted me maybe two years ago and I saw him. I don’t even know why. He did ask a favor of me at that time which was interesting. He asked if I would go to a bar to find him a woman who would beat him. He knew that I was no longer willing to play that game. That had become clear. I had had my first experience of knowing that God was trying to get in touch with me. I would get to where I hated myself so much that I would say, ‘You cannot do this any more, no matter what. You cannot!’ But I always did it again.

“After I met a Christian woman who helped me, the next time he called me, I was able to say (and it’s one of the truly amazing things that occurred), I was able to say I had learned something about Jesus, and something about calling on the protection of Jesus.

“When he called I said, ‘I won’t be able to see you. You see, I’ve turned my life over to Jesus and I can’t do that any more.’ He did such a quick turnaround! He heard the word ‘Jesus’ and it terrified him and he went away! I had thought many times that this man was satanic. It seems to be such a corny word – but that’s the way I felt about him. He was devil-driven or at the very least, related to the darkest forces. Sure enough, I called on Jesus and this man couldn’t end our conversation soon enough. That was the last time I heard from him until about two years ago, when he wanted me to find this woman. He told me he had been looking all those years for someone to take my place. What a ‘precious relationship’ I had been for him – how important, and so on. He’s now dead, which is interesting. He died maybe a year or so ago. He was young. He might have been forty by then. My girl friend said, ‘Oh, did you know that so-and-so died?’ She thought I might be interested because she had no idea about what kind of relationship we had had. She knew we saw each other occasionally. She didn’t think it was sexual at all. She knows I am happily married now. That’s all.”

Cyndie: “I used to jump into relationships. I would meet somebody at a party, sit up all night and talk, and think that this was ‘it’ and move in with him, all within twelve hours. And I would do this repeatedly. It was because I was so desperate. People say, ‘Oh, I was desperate,’ but what they mean is that they went to bed on a first date. I’m talking about moving in within twelve hours, and then realizing that it’s so crazy that you run out screaming like a maniac after a couple of weeks. You run out into the street and grab just any old place to live in. You don’t even do intelligent apartment shopping, because you need a place to sleep. You ‘crash’ in girlfriends’ houses. And, then, you go through periods of abstinence to protect yourself, and then, you become so desperately lonely you go to a party and meet somebody and you sit up all night, have one of those ‘soul sessions,’ and move in within ten hours. This time you think, ‘This is it. This is the wonderful, wonderful person who is going to save me, and I’ll never be lonely again and he’ll be wonderful.’ ”

* * *

As I listened to these women talk, I saw how they ran the gamut: some of them were the prototype of a fearful woman – others were the typical Strong Woman. All were adult children of alcoholics. All had been in therapy for many years. All of them had made very tiny inroads into “answers” for their problems in therapy. All of them felt that something was intrinsically wrong with them. None of them knew (before very recently) that they had been acting in typical “cookie-cutter” fashion – they were duplicates of each other – in terms of the bizarre degree to which they acted in self-deprecating ways with men. All of them found that in the therapy groups they were in, the clients who were not adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs) had the same problems as those who were ACOAs – but to “normal” degrees. All the ACOAs had these problems to degrees that baffled their therapists.

“You are so bright! Why can’t you let go of this degrading relationship?!” the therapists would cry. Everyone else in the groups who came from non-alcoholic homes were able to extricate themselves and keep themselves extricated from these abusive relationships after about a year or so of therapy.

After three years of therapy, the ACOAs were beginning to detach a very little bit from abuse, but only a little. All of them felt they could not measure up to the others in their therapy groups. They felt like failures in “Self-Esteem 101.”

This was true of most of the ACOA women I spoke with, and most of the men . . .

* * *

Chuck is an engineer in a large midwestern city. He lives with his wife and four children. His mother, who lived near them, passed away over ten years ago. His alcoholic father died when he was very young.

Chuck is four years sober, now, and he is just beginning to get out of this intense emotional pain he’s been experiencing all his life.

Chuck’s an avid tennis player, and we met for this interview at the athletic club, over sandwiches and carrot juice.

Toby: “What does ‘shame’ mean to you?”

Chuck: “Shame is guilt, but it’s guilt that everybody knows! It’s when I feel real guilty about something and I’m sure everyone around knows what’s going on with me.”

Toby: “Then there is that added element of exposure and humiliation.”

Chuck: “Yes. That’s exactly right. In addition, it carries an element of, ‘I’m guilty about this, and I’m all bad,’ or ‘I’m no good.’ ”

Toby: “Your father was an alcoholic.”

Chuck: “Yes. There are a couple of pieces of evidence to support this. One is my own alcoholism, which began very early and became manifest almost immediately when I took my first drink. The second is that I identify so strongly with the adult children’s movement. I was in a family treatment center and was processing some other things, but one day my counselor came to me and showed me one of those adult children’s ‘laundry lists.’ I immediately knew that was me.

“I was isolated while growing up, not only from my parents, but also from my peers. The only chum I can ever remember having was a playmate, a little girl.”

Toby: “How old were you?”

Chuck: “Five or six. One of the surprising things is that though I remember very little, I remember the girl’s name. I don’t much remember what she looked like, but I remember that her name was Brenda. I remember what we did. We played cops and robbers on our tricycles. That was my only playmate. Ever.

“There was a clear-cut message from my mother (and maybe from my father) that I was spending too much time with Brenda.”

Toby: “How were you supposed to spend your time?”

Chuck: “I have no idea, but I know I spent the remainder of it glued to the radio. Being very shy and alone and not having either male or female companions, my relationships with girls were totally a fantasy world. The upshot of that was that I became super-shy around women.”

Toby: “You told me earlier you were chronically depressed. Did that bring on a kind of inertia about changing anything in your life?”

Chuck: “You betcha it did. Inertia. I was frequently brought to the attention of the headmaster in school as an underachiever. I scored very high on those stupid tests, and people wondered why I didn’t shine.

“And I sensed that people had never been very important in my life. I used to think I was too lazy to call people, and reach out to people. But, largely I believe it was not important to me. Other people had never been important, because I grew up so isolated.

“Once, when on vacation (I was six), a little girl turned to her mother right after lunch and said (about me), ‘Wasn’t he rude at lunch?’ and I had no idea what she meant, but I sure know what my feelings were at the time: ‘Girl, I don’t need you!’ and I remember thinking about all the other kids around and I said, ‘Babes, I don’t need you, either!’

“I remember when I first felt lonely: I was already an adult! If you ever read I Never Promised You a Rose Garden or saw the movie, you might remember that it was about this little girl who liked to burn herself with cigarettes. She was so sick she could not feel it. And, one of the most poignant scenes for me was, as she was getting well, she sneaked into the bathroom and lit a cigarette and burned her arm. Her face lit up and she said, ‘It hurts! It hurts!’ And, that was what I was thinking of when I could first feel the loneliness. That’s the first time I ever remember identifying a lonely feeling. I was forty years old.”

* * *

That little girl in the book that Chuck identifies with was “psychotic.” Yet, tens of millions of adult children of alcoholics – people who are achievers, highly functioning, not at all labeled psychotic – are living on the edge, not feeling, or feeling to bizarre degrees. Again, these people often “get into therapy,” only to often find themselves feeling even more on the fringe, since the therapists often cannot relate to the degree of detachment or attachment that ACOAs manifest.

We need to remember that ACOAs are not freaks that seem to have fatal flaws that sprang from nowhere. That we are not “typically neurotic” or “borderline” or somehow mutant in our severe alienation. There is a perfectly sound reason for our deep craters of need. And when we can begin to see the logic of our development and realize that we need not fear that we cannot ever “get well,” we begin to heal quickly. We begin to lose our fear of looking at, facing, our pasts.

We see that squarely looking at our alcoholic childhoods is the first step in our salvation, and not a thing that will get in the way of our “getting on with life.”

If we do not face the past at some point in our adult lives, it will become harder and harder to “get on with life,” because our childhoods in alcoholism will cause us to stumble over the past – over and over and over. We need to lose our rationalizations that cover our fears about even peeking at our parents’ alcoholism.

Workbook Section

Write your feelings and thoughts on the following four comments, concerning the chapter you just read:

1) I still have a lot of secrets. I still feel an irrational shame about what my parents did to me, as a child. I am an ACOA.

2) I’ve never told anyone I was abused.

3) I’ve never wanted anyone to know just how desperate I’ve felt. I’ve said I was desperate, but I never told my most humiliating experiences.

4) I’ve put up with a lot of abuse, so I wouldn’t be alone.

Draw circles at random, all over a piece of paper, representing yourself, your parents, your siblings. Name the circles.

Notice the placement of the circles. How close are you to your parents? How close are your brothers, sisters, to your parents? If you were an only child, how far in from the borders of the page did you allow yourself to go? What placement would you rather see, if you could re-do your childhood?

Write the phrases that you could “hear” your parent(s) say, if he or she were responding to this chapter.

How do these phrases of your parent(s) still evoke reactions in you today?

If your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc., were to read this chapter, given the history of your relationship, what do you believe would be his or her response?

How do you feel about that probable response?

Do you think you would encounter uncomfortable feelings if you would share your innermost thoughts and feelings about this chapter with your closest loved one?

Do you feel there is any way to begin open communication with your closest loved one about the feelings you just expressed? Is there a way to begin discussion about your feelings honestly, without making yourself too vulnerable (and in a way in which that person could really hear you)?

What subjects come to your mind as you read this chapter? What subjects do you believe are necessary to deal with, at some time (today or in the future), to continue your own healing?

After reading this chapter, what area of difficulty arises in your mind – an area that brings up emotional pain, when you try to change your attitude toward it, or change your life-style concerning that area?

How can you lessen the pain that you anticipated in the above question? Can you do so by lowering your expectations of yourself? Can you anticipate taking a beginning very small step to change, instead of big ones? Can you allow yourself times of rest, of break, between changes? Do you have a spiritual program of recovery that buffers the pain surrounding this issue?

Belief systems can either increase or decrease psychic pain. What are your intrinsic beliefs about the ideas presented in this chapter? Do they dovetail with what you were taught as a child? Are they ideas that protected you as a child, but that hinder your growth as an ethical adult?

What are your beliefs about the higher power? Do you think that God is basically a punishing God? If you felt fear when dealing with the questions at the end of this chapter, does this at all have to do with a concept of a punishing God?

List positive change(s) you have already made in your life, concerning the issue(s) in this chapter and how they have affected you.

Describe the details – the actual emotional steps – of your journey to reach this more comfortable state that you talked about in the previous question.

How may you learn from this journey, to face other situations in life that seem difficult, but that are opportunities for growth?

Have you had any losses, any setbacks, around any of the issues in this chapter? Have you had times when you felt you were “going backwards,” not growing, even though you were trying to get through a difficult situation? Were there times when you felt like staying in a sick situation, and not trying to grow at all? When you liked it the way it was?

Having come through this, and faced it somehow, do you see growth, perhaps despite yourself?

Chapter 4: Adult Daughters of Alcoholics and the Mistress Compulsion

“The Lord will keep you from all harm – He will watch over your life; The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.” (Ps. 121:7,8)

Adult children of alcoholics have many compulsions and obsessions. Near the top of the list, in order of self-destructiveness and destructiveness to others, is the mistress compulsion.

When “she” is “the other woman,” she is feared and hated.

When “she” is our daughter, we agonize for her, we sometimes excuse her behavior, while screaming at her at other times. We try to find out “why.”

When “she” is us, we emphatically do not want to read how this is hurting us; we only want to know how to get “him” to leave his wife.

That is, until we are hurting so much that we allow a little tiny bit of reality-light in.

And almost none of us ever connects this syndrome to our being from alcoholic families.

* * *

Kathleen was sitting in an AA meeting, listening to the speaker tell how he used to be a thief when he was drinking, and how he tried to do the same kinds of things sober, but his conscience wouldn’t let him. He had to return what he had taken. Kathleen whispered to the man who was sitting next to her, “I used to steal husbands.”

He answered, “They’re hard to return!”

* * *

Kathleen was, in her own words, “embarrassingly typical” of the ’60s woman, when she was still “out there” drinking. Sober five years, she recounted her “other” life on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

“My husband was a political cartoonist. He was involved in everything from the civil-rights movement to the Vietnam marches. I called him the movement’s ‘sketch-mascot.’ ”

She was uncomfortable about speaking of him. It was years since the divorce, and there hadn’t been any children, but it was pushed down, not out of, her memory, and she didn’t know how to exorcise it. “I knew he was having affairs . . . it was difficult in those days to be monogamous and still stay true to one’s hip self-image. One had to ‘politically justify’ even your personal choices. At least, that’s what I told myself.”

Kathleen’s apartment was large and yet intimate. A fine New York building, it housed mostly Europeanized intellectuals and writers whose backgrounds and tastes came together. Kathleen took me around to visit with some of her neighbors, to get a flavor of what she was like now: sober, and free of her old resentments that had led her to isolate herself from successful, mainstream people.

It was utterly charming to see her in this setting: burnished apartments; quiet, elegant friends. It was such a far cry from the days when she and her husband “proclaimed values that somehow linked the Radical Left with Buddhism.”

I couldn’t imagine this soft-spoken, straightforward, likable person, drunk or on pills. She was functioning well, now, and she was contented. She went on, “One simply did not decide to not have children because you wanted more time with your husband or to devote to your work. You said, instead, ‘I don’t want to add to the population growth.’ Heaven forbid one should have said, ‘I don’t want to share my money or my time.’ I think these were significant ways in which I began to lie to myself.”

She sat quietly on the sofa. “My ex-husband had a lot of affairs. It ate me up inside. My terror, my depression, was so bad, I thought I’d die. But I couldn’t leave, I was so scared to be alone. Later, when the pain of staying got worse than the pain of being alone, I left. I thought I was about to have a breakdown, and it was simply a matter that that was worse than being alone.

“Then, I started really drinking at bars, so I wouldn’t feel alone. But, mostly, I drank, once I got there, to not notice where I was in the pecking order . . . to seem confident.

“I know, now, that I was married to an alcoholic. My father was one, too. When I look back, I always dated alcoholics or crazies. Nice men either terrified or bored me. I didn’t know what to do with a nice man. It was so foreign, it terrified me. I just had to get away from them. I had to have a man in my life who had a ‘fatal flaw.’ That was familiar.”

She went on. “I had a series of affairs, mostly with married men. I was afraid to take a chance and be ‘the wife’ and be rejected again. I had this false sense of glamour that I was ‘the other woman.’ I told myself, ‘It’s a trade-off.’ I didn’t know I was trading off my self-respect, my self-esteem. Those words seemed irrelevant, then. I didn’t know what they really meant, anyway. The poor self-image I started with went out the window entirely.

“I told myself more lies. That seems like such a strong word, doesn’t it? But if I pretty-up what I did – what I still want to do, sometimes, now, even – I’ll rationalize that I was basically acting as a victim, because of my childhood and my husband, instead of as the victimizer I really was. And I’d make sure I’d surround myself with sympathetic people, and I’d go to a therapist who’d be willing to excuse my behavior by helping me to divert into staying in the past. I’m not blaming therapists any more; I just know that I was a master con artist, and didn’t even know it, most of the time.

“I thought I knew myself so well. I thought I was doing so well! I had wardrobes to match every environment I had to be in. I had the dresses to be with my staid parents; the prep clothes to meet certain men; the expensive-looking Bohemian ethnic dresses to impress the Villagers. Once, I was interviewing for a job at a publishing house, and I instinctively knew that they’d like the ’30s British look although no one in 1963 was wearing that. So, I went to a thrift shop and bought a blue challis dress, real prim-looking. I bought pearls and short, white gloves from the five-and-dime, and put my hair in a bun. The interviewer said, ‘I don’t know why I’m hiring you on the spot . . . I never do that! There’s something about you I like.’ I didn’t know when to stop being a chameleon, and not deceive myself.

“I believe there are so many of us out there: women whose fathers were alcoholics, who are looking for the father they never had in married men. And growing up in an alcoholic home makes you fantasize, want a glamorous, perfect world; expect it; and yet, expect rottenness too.

“So, I went after this bundle of contradictions. And nothing has it so well in one package as an alcoholic married man . . . he’s charming, unattainable, makes you feel special, taken care of. But, when some of the patina wears off, you realize it was an illusion. That you’ve done the only taking-care-of; that he’s incapable of it. But if you ‘love’ him, you tell yourself excuses for him, like you did for your father. I started to realize it’s a disease, but I wasn’t well enough to differentiate between responsibility and disease.

“He’s your vulnerable little boy, at times, and that’s what hooks your guilt. To take care of him, cover for him.

“I told myself, ‘he can’t help it’ . . . which made us both helpless.

“It is confusing, though, when I see him – them – hold down the most fantastic jobs. They are brilliant, you know.

“Was I different when I got sober? Well, take the rum out of the fruitcake, and you’ve still got a fruitcake – for a while at least.

“I had an easy first year of sobriety, as far as not having much pain from withdrawal from alcohol is concerned. This meant that instead of concentrating on the usual pain of early recovery, I was ‘free’ to concentrate on married men. And that’s so unfortunate, because I thought I was weller than I was. If I hadn’t been helped through the first year by my sponsor, I might have died. She helped me to say no to my disease and my compulsion around married men.

“That first year, I still had the old instincts. I didn’t know who I was. I identified with Al-Anon spouses whose mates were womanizers. I shared their terror. And yet I was still attracted to married men. I was on ‘both sides.’ ”

* * *

I had to postpone the next interview session with Kathleen. I realized I had terribly mixed feelings about her. Part of me liked the part of her that was non-threatening to other women, the part of her that identified as a “wife.” And the other part of me didn’t like her, and I knew that it masked a fear for women that got translated into anger. Not that I was a wonderful person, but my background didn’t matter, just then, to me. I could have been Scarlet O’Hara and I would have felt the same way: here was the “kind of woman” who always threatened other women, whether these women identified with her behavior or not.

I told myself that she was the adult-child-of-an-alcoholic-victim, and that she could be anyone’s daughter. That took only some of the anger away.

When we met again, I told her about this, and watched her. More than anything, her eyes and mouth told me there was no longer a sick, threatening woman there. Her mouth did not involuntarily smile as she recounted more horror stories. Her eyes just looked very sad. They didn’t search mine, to look for vulnerability.

She had stopped romancing the past.

* * *

With time and distrust behind us, we got comfortable with each other, with our differences, and surprised each other to find ourselves so much alike. That’s the trouble with interviews, I thought; they are so traumatic, requiring us to get so close, so soon. It’s not fair to our nervous systems.

Kathleen said, “I was sober about three months when I was at a meeting for recovery and felt ‘eyes’ on me. I knew he’d been looking, before, but I didn’t pay much attention. This time, he came up to me after the meeting, and he was so good-looking. He had that sober, yet beery, dissipated look I like, and told me he was a successful insurance agent who was unhappy because he couldn’t spend all his time writing poetry. ‘Just like Wallace Stevens!’ he grinned down at me.

“That was all I needed to make me melt! I know it sounds ’40s-movie corny, but that’s what I did! I melted!

“They know how to hook me. Years ago, I stepped into a downtown ‘hip’ bar where all the newspapermen hang out all day, and this guy I’d never seen before said to me, ‘What a delightful little girl!’ I melted then, too.

“Back to Steve. He was very, very married, and not about to not be. We didn’t really talk . . . we just flirted from across the room at meetings and drove each other crazy. We’d ‘wind up’ at the same meetings, and ‘signal’ each other when people were talking. We’d circle each other after the meetings, talking to other people, but looking at each other. I used to do that in the seventh grade, with a boy who had a crush on me, and me on him, and even though he’d look at me, every day, from across the hall, I never had the nerve to talk with him. I thought he’d not respond because he was so cute and I wasn’t one of the popular girls. One day, after lunch, when we were all outside, he pushed me to the ground, and sat on me, and shouted at me, ‘Admit you love me!’ That was the happiest day of my junior-high life.

“Here we go again.

“I wanted to go to bed with Steve, but I couldn’t. Not sober. I dreamed of going to his house. I dreamed his wife died – peacefully, of course. And we would have this clandestine affair until enough time passed – enough decent time, a year after the funeral.

“Other times, I’d fantasize that instead of getting married, I wouldn’t marry him; I’d drive him crazy with wanting to own me. (That took care of any idea he’d have about getting tired of me if I were his ‘wife’ . . . he’d be kept at enough of a distance forever to keep him interested!)”

* * *

We laughed a lot, but I felt a little awkward still. It was like eavesdropping and then being caught by someone who doesn’t mind. Kathleen had gotten to the point of trusting me so much, and I began to realize how naive she really was.

She had so much guilt over her almost-childish fantasies; she didn’t even know they were so “embarrassingly” young. They were the fantasies of a twelve-year-old – the same age she was when her father died.

* * *

“Luckily for us, nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. I was living with my sponsor, and told her what was ‘going on.’ I thought I’d die from wanting him, but when, after meetings, he’d stand in front of his car, and look at me, as if to say ‘get in’ – I couldn’t. And I’d get depressed about my not being able to do what I’d done so easily before, when I was drinking. I was too scared. And I felt too guilty. I couldn’t handle that kind of guilt. And, I knew the pain I was in for, when he would want out.

“I knew that I was the really vulnerable one. He was one with twenty-five years sobriety, and I was the one with three months.

“When I’d get really angry, depressed, and feel he had an advantage, vulnerability-wise, I consoled myself with the fact that I wasn’t the married one, and could legitimately have a relationship or two or three some day, when I was well enough . . . and he was stuck in a marriage he couldn’t really accept.

“But, then, I’d feel sorry for him, and my anger would go, and I’d be attracted to him all over again. Talk about a merry-go-round! And all between the ears!”

I asked her, “Did you ever try to stop?”

“Yeah. I prayed about it. But I was mad at God; I felt my Higher Power didn’t want me to have any more fun in life. But I was too scared not to pray. One day, I was in agony, and someone I was talking with asked me, ‘Are you hurting enough to give up the edges of your pain?’ That was the beginning of letting go. I thought I could just let go of the pain, and hold on to the rest, but it wasn’t painful to let go of the rest. It just went, so slowly, easily, I didn’t even know it was gone, until I started noticing I felt more peaceful. I’m glad I went through it. Now I don’t have to go through it again, not so bad.”

I told Kathleen that I had read that Bill Wilson, one of the co-founders of AA once said, “We’ve had more than our fair share of romance!” We both burst out laughing.

“So, did you go right from feeling like a seventh-grader to wellness? Obviously, it couldn’t have been that easy, but you look so content,” I asked Kathleen.

She answered, “A lot worked out, after being abstinent for two more years. I didn’t realize that that fantasy world was connected to abstinence, escape. But I shared what I was going through with other women, and I found out they were going through similar experiences, too.

“The baggage I brought in with me to AA! The old, violent, addictive dependence on men. That fear of being alone! I was told, ‘no major changes the first year.’ I didn’t realize, then, that that wasn’t only because the trauma of getting sober was enough. It was also because my brain would clear up enough for my perceptions to change. And who I’d be attracted to in a year, or two, or five, would be qualitatively different from whom I was interested in during those early months of sobriety.”

“Why were you abstinent so long?” I asked.

“I was scared. I didn’t think I could be burned again, like I was, by my husband – and stay sober.”

“Were you burned again?” I asked.

“Yes, and no,” she answered. “I waited two years. I started going into my old pattern of isolation, and then desperately running out into the first ‘relationship’ I found within two days. But sober, I was different. I held back, some. I didn’t feel so desperate. I didn’t move in with him in a week! I got involved when I knew I could survive it if he humiliated me.

“And he didn’t. It just wasn’t what either of us wanted. It was not fun, believe me, feeling disappointment because I wasn’t what he wanted, either!

“It’s a real trip to learn that we’re all pretty much the same, and not the center of everyone else’s universe. But, it’s a lot better than feeling desperate and terror-stricken and driven all the time. I can even stay by myself at night, a lot, now. I never thought I was running from me.” She added, “Those men . . . it’s sad. None of us knew that they couldn’t take care of me, emotionally. That they weren’t supposed to.”

* * *

There are fifteen million-plus adult daughters of alcoholics in the U.S. today. Sixty-five percent of them will become alcoholics and/or marry alcoholics.

And even though the recovery rate from alcoholism is very high, only two out of thirty-four people ever reach treatment. The good news is that once a person starts attending AA, he/she has a 75 percent chance to stay sober.

The rest eventually go insane or die from one of the 350 secondary disease/disorders to alcoholism.

Don’t these women ask for help? Yes, they do. Just like the woman you just read about, there are masses of bright, articulate women who regularly see mental-health professionals. Women constitute at least 75 percent of the total patient load in this country.

Unfortunately, many therapists view them as “sensitive,” “emotionally-vulnerable,” “character-disordered” people who need to take minor tranquilizers to get through life. The pills, especially, are seen as part of the solution, rather than as they are – part of the problem.

Therapists often do not want to “call” someone an alcoholic, an addict, even though the A.M.A. says that it is a disease. This stigma is killing millions of adult daughters of alcoholics in therapy, today.

Workbook Section

Write your feelings and thoughts on the following four comments, concerning the chapter you just read:

1) This behavior felt “glamorous” when I drank; and shameful when I got sober.

2) I never looked at this behavior as if it were “stealing”.

3) If it’s me who wants your husband, I only care about me. If it’s my husband, I hate you. I know I’m inconsistent.

4) I never like to think about consequences.

Draw a circle or a square or a rectangle for yourself, for your married lover, for his or her spouse. Name the shapes. Place a one-word description in each of the shapes.

What feelings can you identify in each of the shapes? For one moment, try to “get into the skin” of each of the parties involved. What are the feelings?

Write the phrases that you could “hear” your parent(s) say, if he or she were responding to this chapter.

How do these phrases of your parent(s) still evoke reactions in you today?

If your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc., were to read this chapter, given the history of your relationship, what do you believe would be his or her response?

How do you feel about that probable response?

Do you think you would encounter uncomfortable feelings if you would share your innermost thoughts and feelings about this chapter with your closest loved one?

What subjects come to your mind as you read this chapter? What subjects do you believe are necessary to deal with, at some time (today or in the future), to continue your own healing?

List positive change(s) you have already made in your life, concerning the issue(s) in this chapter and how they have affected you.

Describe the details – the actual emotional steps – of your journey to reach this more comfortable state that you talked about in the previous question.

How may you learn from this journey, to face other situations in life that seem difficult, but that are opportunities for growth?

Having come through this, and faced it somehow, do you see growth, perhaps despite yourself?

Chapter 7: Notes to Marriage/Family Counselors and Their Clients

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Gal. 5:22)

Most of the problems we have talked about in this book are so very treatable. However, I think it is just about totally useless to do marital counseling with a couple if one of them is a drinking alcoholic. The alcoholic can have all the good intentions in the world, but all those good intentions go flying out the window with the next drink.

Another factor that contributes to a lack of success in counseling drinking alcoholics is the fact that alcoholism is a progressive disease. Every day the alcoholic is drinking, the disease is progressing; and every day the alcoholic is drinking, he or she is daily becoming less able to cope with the realities of life or with the intimacies of the marital relationship.

In addition, alcoholism necessitates a life-style of blame. The alcoholic, driven by the alcoholism, needs to blame others and situations for his or her drinking, in order to continue the drinking. Many alcoholics do not wish to go to a counseling session “smelling of booze.” So he goes, needing a drink, and in a state of withdrawal. This withdrawal often manifests itself as a general anxiety, a general agitation.

This agitation causes anger, and it seems to be usually explained by the alcoholic as, “I’m angry because _____ ” (pointing out some possibly otherwise-minor problem in the relationship). The alcoholism forces the alcoholic to blame his agitation on the marriage rather than on the alcoholism.

Furthermore, early-stage alcoholism is often relatively non-detectable, almost always only manifesting with psychological symptoms. Therefore, many therapists see only the psychological problems, and think that this is a “psychological problem,” rather than an alcoholism problem.

To get at the truth of the matter, I think it is important for the counselor to obtain a thorough alcoholism history of both sides of the family. Then start asking about each person’s drinking. Then, ask the other person about the other person’s drinking. If there are children in the family, ask them about the drinking in the family. It usually does not help to say, “Do you think that your husband, or your father, or your mother, or your wife is an alcoholic?” Many people are reluctant to “label” somebody. They think that one has to be in a late stage of alcoholism, before one can “name it.” Also, they don’t recognize the disease. If you ask the question differently, you often get a straight answer about whether there is or isn’t a drinking problem. Some questions that one can ask are, “Does this person’s drinking ever bother you?” or “Do you get uncomfortable about that person’s drinking?”

I would also ask the person who you are questioning about their own drinking – if they have ever “switched” to a lighter drink.

“Switching” is usually a method of trying to control one’s drinking, something that non-alcoholics don’t need to do. One usually only tries to control one’s drinking when one has a problem.

It is important to realize that the disease of alcoholism forces alcoholics to protect their drinking by lying about the amount and the frequency and duration of their drinking. It is not a moral judgment, it is a diagnosis, to say “This person lies about his drinking.”

* * *

Let’s now look at some of the “games” that are often played out in counseling sessions, and that are often undetected by the counselor who is either: a) unskilled in seeing alcoholism symptoms and the games that manifest from the alcoholism in the therapy office, or b) himself or herself an adult child of an alcoholic who is easily baffled by the proceedings and the twists and turns that go on in counseling sessions with these clients.

Glenda and Timothy are the parents of Tommy, a seventeen-year-old who is “acting out.” That’s why they “took him to see a therapist.”

The therapist was a highly-skilled professional marriage and family counselor in California who had been in practice for twenty-five years.

It was a case of undetected family alcoholism. The child was in the early stages of addiction, which could have been detected had a thorough family history been taken. (The son’s grandfather and great-grandfather were alcoholics. Grandchildren of alcoholics are at high risk.) In addition, the father of the child was an untreated alcoholic. He was not drinking for the last two years, but his alcoholism was untreated. He did not attend AA, or any treatment to deal with his alcoholism, and he thought he could deal with it all by himself. So, his behavior did not change – except that he put down the bottle.

The counselor saw the child alone, saw the family together, and saw the parents as a couple. This went on for a few months, and, in one of the couple’s sessions, the mother brought up some changes that she would like to see in the family. They had been discussed by her and the therapist in several previous sessions when she was alone with the therapist. The therapist had agreed that these were reasonable goals that a family should aim towards. So, she brought these up in the couple’s sessions.

Prior to this session, the father had also had individual sessions with the therapist. The therapist had tried hard to get the father to “get in touch with his feelings.” The therapist applauded the father for talking about his feelings, but did not suggest that he make behavior changes. His wife had to make behavioral changes; and the counseling became lopsided, as she had to perform more, and the husband was only required to talk.

The mother realized this and talked about her resentment. When this was pointed out to him, the therapist was surprised, and being a basically honest person, and meaning the best for his patients, he agreed with her. Even so, he seemed truly confused and expressed his bafflement at how this had all come about.

The alcoholic husband was a channel through which his alcoholism passed. The disease twisted situations in such a manner so that the alcoholic would not have to drop certain sick behaviors, enabling him to stay only “dry” (not “sober”).

One could say, “This man was not drinking. He was an alcoholic but he was not drinking.” Well, alcoholism is very patient. Even if an alcoholic is not drinking for a while, even for a few years, if the alcoholism is not treated, it will do its best to manipulate situations (through the alcoholic) to keep things as they are, to disallow the alcoholic to make significant changes towards healing, so that he is ripe, vulnerable, to return to drinking.

As it turned out, the therapist himself was an adult child of an alcoholic, who often found himself trying very hard to please his alcoholic clients, even if that meant twisting the therapy sessions around to suit the whims of alcoholism. Of course, the counselor knew nothing of this. He was untreated for his family disease.

* * *

An even more-typical counseling fiasco that alcoholism can and does create is a scenario in which an alcoholic and spouse are the clients, and the spouse is angry and frustrated by the alcoholic’s seemingly uncanny ability to “shape up” in front of helping professionals. The alcoholic – male or female – “turns on the charm” and the non-alcoholic spouse finds it very difficult to be believed, concerning the alcoholism. The non-alcoholic comes off as very over-reactive, frustrated, inarticulate, and enraged.

The collusion that often results is that the alcoholic figuratively “puts his arms around the shoulders” of the counselor and claims: “Now, you and I are fairly reasonable; look at this maniac I have to live with! Can’t you see what I’m putting up with?” This usually makes the non-alcoholic (who has been through this before) feel utterly powerless, frustrated and angry; and she or he comes off as “crazy.” The upshot is usually that the focus is taken off the alcoholism, and the therapy focuses on the “over-reactive” spouse.

At that point, the non-alcoholic usually leaves counseling. (Or, if the counseling gets to the point where the counselor begins to see through the alcoholism, then the alcoholic drops out of counseling.)

The final result is often that, even though the non-alcoholic spouse came into the counseling in order to be able to increase the amount and intensity of love and intimacy in that family, after going through this professional stamp of approval that he or she really is crazy, this spouse winds up less able to trust the alcoholic than ever. (He was so powerful that he could actually con the counselor, even though the spouse couldn’t express that because, “My goodness! If I said that I would really seem crazy, wouldn’t I?”)

The non-alcoholic spouse crawls even further into the shell of self-protection and less intimacy.

And, everybody wonders why marriage counseling didn’t work.

* * *

These are but a few of the “games” that go on in counseling with undetected alcoholism. And what makes it even much more complicated is that so many adult children of alcoholics are going into the helping professions, and bringing with them not only the guilt and denial from their own families, but they also bring with them the fear of the alcoholic and an intense need to please alcoholics.

When the untreated counselor is manipulated by the alcoholism, I think the therapist is not consciously aware that he is a victim of the twists and turns of the alcoholism. I think he feels “twinges”; he knows that he is not leading the couple, but following this couple in an uncomfortable “grabbing the tiger by the tail,” so to speak, and trying to hold on for dear life while it runs rampant. He knows he is not somebody who can truly guide this couple, but he is baffled, and fearful of honesty.

And given the history of adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs), where all their formative lives were spent in denial about what was going on, and where they lied to themselves about the reality (because they had to in order to protect themselves), they bring these symptoms into the therapy sessions themselves.

They are not able to tell themselves what the uncomfortableness is in these sessions where they are not counseling, but “holding on to a rampant tiger’s tail.” They do not know how to stop this from going on. They just hope to God that it will get tired, and slow down, and they can take charge again.

Now, you may say to yourself, “Well, counselors usually go through a period where they have to ‘get counseled’ as part of their training. So, they are not untreated for their past.”

Well, they are and they aren’t. When they are going through therapy to learn to be counselors, they deal with a variety of problems from their pasts. But, almost none of these modalities takes into account the depth, bizarreness, and intensity of the denial, guilt, and fear that the child of an alcoholic brings into his or her adulthood.

A few years ago the NIAAA (National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism) conducted a study and discovered a startling fact. Sixty percent of the freshman class at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine were first-born children of alcoholics. I don’t think it is an accident that adult children of alcoholics – with the bizarre guilt that they have grown up with – are literally self-driven towards the helping professions. They are trying to make some sense out of the nonsense they grew up with. But, when you don’t realize it is futile to try to make sense out of a certain kind of nonsense, it is like chasing your tail all your life. You don’t realize that you are desperately still trying to please your alcoholic parent, and this carries through to your alcoholic clients. But, you get angry because they are not grateful. Then you become guilty for feeling angry. Your vacillating feelings go from guilty to angry with your clients. You stay on the treadmill until you recognize that anger and its source. For, if the anger at alcoholics continues, so does your unconscious guilt that results from the anger. (You are still guilty for being angry at a “sacred” parent!) Thus, the swing towards the guilt. And then, the lack of appreciation from the alcoholic (you are being nice again) brings back the anger. And the pendulum continues. Until you get help.

How many untreated ACOA-counselors are “treating” families of alcoholics and therefore continuing the disease patterns?

Workbook Section

Write your feelings and thoughts on the following four comments, concerning the chapter you just read:

1) I never thought about the fact that when my alcoholic spouse is “controlling” his drinking, he’s probably in withdrawal.

2) I took my child to five counselors, and none of them saw the alcoholism. They assumed it was just a behavior problem.

3) I get so angry at my alcoholic husband that I scream at him in our counseling sessions. I know he’s fooling the counselors. They think I’m exaggerating when I talk about alcoholism all the time. They think he drinks because of his marriage or his job. Then, they focus on my anger, instead of his drinking problem. They say he drinks because I am angry. They never answer me when I say I wasn’t always angry when we first got married – not until he started staying out all night, drinking. They just chalk it all up to a “lack of communication.”

4) I am an ACOA. I’m also a counselor. I certainly don’t want to look at my parents’ alcoholism, now. It’s all behind me. I have a great career ahead of me. Yes, I’m still a little uneasy about all the things I don’t want to look at. But, I’ve got it all together, now. All but a few things. Well, quite a few things. But, enough areas are fine. I really don’t want any clients to run into me at ACOA meetings. Besides, the alcoholism was my parents’ problem. It’s not mine. Yeah, I know these things have their lasting effect. Well, I’m too busy living in the present.

Draw three circles, one of you, one of your spouse, one of your counselor. Name those circles. Write in one word that describes each.

Now draw two circles, one representing you, and one representing your spouse, as you are now, when alone.

Now draw two circles, of you and your spouse, again; this time, draw the two of you as you were, before you entered counseling. Examine the relative sizes of the circles in relation to one another. Do the circles have equal “strength”? How close are they?

Write the phrases that you could “hear” your parent(s) say, if he or she were responding to this chapter.

How do these phrases of your parent(s) still evoke reactions in you today?

If your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc., were to read this chapter, given the history of your relationship, what do you believe would be his or her response?

How do you feel about that probable response?

Do you think you would encounter uncomfortable feelings if you would share your innermost thoughts and feelings about this chapter with your closest loved one?

What subjects come to your mind as you read this chapter? What subjects do you believe are necessary to deal with, at some time (today or in the future), to continue your own healing?

List positive change(s) you have already made in your life, concerning the issue(s) in this chapter and how they have affected you.

Describe the details – the actual emotional steps – of your journey to reach this more comfortable state that you talked about in the previous question.

How may you learn from this journey, to face other situations in life that seem difficult, but that are opportunities for growth?

Having come through this, and faced it somehow, do you see growth, perhaps despite yourself?

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