Do I read up on alcoholism because I still hope I can find a way to make my spouse stop drinking? Do I blame all the family’s adversities on the alcoholic, sober or not? Have I the courage to face my own mistakes and character flaws? Do I justify my resentment and rationalize my self-pity? “How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what others say or do, but only what he does himself, that it may be just and pure.” (Marcus Aurelius: Meditations) (One Day At A Time In Al-Anon)
What I’ve found very salutary is to stop talking about the alcoholic. Sometimes, I have to devise a tactic for a particular situation, and for that I can go to the literature, to God, and to a trusted other. Otherwise: I need not concern myself with the person, even if they are right in front of me.
Every situation I’m in has me as a participant, not a passive victim but someone whose every belief, thought, word, and action contributes for good or for ill. These beliefs, thoughts, words, and actions are not necessarily right because they originate in me, because I’m not the drinking alcoholic or using addict, because I have good intentions, or because I’ve suffered. But each one ‘does its work’, regardless of these factors. There is no such thing as a private belief or thought: everything leaks out through the cracks. People always know.
The traffic goes both ways, and it’s been interesting over the years listening to the experience of other people growing up in alcoholic households, to complement my own. Sometimes it was a violent alcoholic who had the greatest impact. Sometimes the alcoholic was genial, passed out, hidden behind a newspaper, or just out of the house or out of town a lot, and the real menace was the angry, controlling, permanently exasperated, intrusive martyr with the prying eyes.
I watch, in particular in the domestic environment, for when I’m leaking anger, issuing minute directions, sighing, groaning, or rolling my eyes, rifling through boxes or cupboards, tidying or sorting things that are not my own, asking apparently innocent questions but with the purpose of ‘supplementing the dossier’, working hard in order to gain the moral upper ground and therefore ammunition, and watching, watching, watching, looking for a reaction, an interaction, attention, affirmation, or other goods the person, right now, is not volunteering.
I am the one the alcoholic or the addict has found difficult to live with and difficult to deal with.
There’s plenty amiss in me. When I’m fully cooked, perhaps then I turn my attention outwards. There’s no sign of perfection any time soon, however, so I’m going to continue with my programme.
What can I do?
- Go to meetings
- Have a sponsor
- Use a sponsor
- Take the Twelve Steps systematically on a regular basis
- Apply the principles contained in the Twelve Traditions and Twelve Concepts
- Read the daily readings from the three daily readings books
- Apply the principles contained in those readings
- Run each situation that arises through the Just For Today card
- Run each situation that arises through the Al-Anon slogans
- Pray to seek God’s will
- Carry that out
- Meditate to raise my consciousness to a higher plane
- Look for my faulty beliefs, thoughts, words, and action
- Seek to correct those systematically with the help of the programme
- Look at how I can keep my life running effectively, efficiently, and harmoniously
... regardless of what the addict or alcoholic says or does.