“Sometimes people say that the 3 Cs—I did not cause it, I cannot control it, I cannot cure it, the ‘it’ being alcoholism and the alcoholic—are accompanied by a fourth: I can indeed contribute to it. Is there not a contradiction in that?”
I understand alcoholism to be the alcoholic’s internal
compulsion to have the first drink (despite evidence that this is a terrible
idea), then a second, physical, compulsion that takes over and drives him to
the end of the bout, hours, days, weeks, months, or years later.
I am powerless over those two compulsions, just as the
alcoholic is, without help from a Higher Power.
However, the domestic situation, like a play in a theatre,
has multiple players, and so there lies my contribution.
The particular contribution is this:
Alcoholics seems to require hitting a rock-bottom to be
catapulted into recovery.
Anything that softens the blow, in other words shields them
from the consequences, prevents that rock-bottom.
As the enabler, I was preventing the one thing that might
bring genuine progress: the alcoholic hitting the buffers with full force.